A new shop with “fun” in the name is creating headaches for concerned citizens and the police.
And the problem could mushroom.
Fun Guyz opened on King Street West in Chatham, right beside the cenotaph. It’s a magic mushroom shop.
Magic mushrooms, which contain the drug psilocybin, are illegal in Canada.
Fun Guyz has shops located in various cities in Ontario, including Toronto, London, Windsor and Kitchener-Waterloo. Many have been raided by police, but continue to operate.
Chatham-Kent police Sgt. Jason Herder, a member of the intelligence unit, said officers raided the store on May 8. And again on May 10.
Members of the intelligence unit pulled 370 packages of suspected psilocybin out of the store May 8. Police say it’s worth about $20,000.
Another $12,000 was seized on Friday.
The Fun Guyz shop has garnered other attention as well. For starters, numerous readers of The Chatham Voice have called the paper expressing outrage.
And Stuart McFadden, head of economic development for the municipality, said not all development is welcome in Chatham-Kent.
“The reality is they are illegal,” he said of the shop. “We don’t support illegal business and/or businesses that are trying to use our community to stand on a soap box. There is no time or place for that.”
There is a case before the courts, brought on by the owners of Fun Guyz, to legalize psilocybin.
“They should be shut down,” McFadden said of the Chatham Fun Guys shop. “I don’t make the rules. I just play by them.”
But the Chatham location is far from an isolated shop. Herder said there are 23 other locations in the province where shops attempt to sell magic mushrooms, as Fun Guyz is not alone. But it is all illegal, Herder said.
“It’s not legal even for medicinal purposes,” he said. “For lack of a better term, it (Fun Guyz) is a franchise in the province. They have stores in Toronto, Windsor, London, Kitchener-Waterloo…”
With police already having raided the storefront location, and the head of Chatham-Kent’s economic development department against the shop’s presence, the Municipality of Chatham-Kent’s Community Job Board web page strangely featured a job posting for Fun Guyz, seeking an “experienced retail employee,” as of last week.
Even after the raid, the posting remained on the municipal site.
