The Strange Case of Mark Niemoeller

Mark Niemoeller, 46, of Columbus, Ind., decided to give up farming in 1987. With money loaned to him by a friend, Niemoeller set up a mail-order business that he ran from his family farm. The business, JLF Poisonous Non-Consumables, began with the sale of one product: amanita muscaria mushrooms. Niemoeller picked the red-capped mushrooms himself, dried them out in an old RV, then placed an ad in High Times magazine. Soon JLF Poisonous Non-Consumables was inundated with orders. By September 2001, JLF had become a multi-million-dollar business -- raking in $50,000 a month and branching out into the sale of hundreds of other plants, mushroom species and pure chemical compounds.

Why would a company that sells purportedly poisonous products advertise in High Times?

Perhaps because JLF's best-selling product, amanita muscaria, as well as dozens of other products now included in the catalogue, have powerful psychoactive properties -- when ingested.

Ingestion is the key here, since Niemoeller contends that the consumption of JLF's products is not an issue. The legal justification for his argument, he says, is right in the company's name -- JLF Poisonous Non-Consumables.

JLF requires that every customer recite a disclaimer in a recorded telephone conversation. The disclaimer states that the customer is over 18 years old and will not ingest products purchased from JLF.

In addition to the disclaimer, JLF's catalogue displays a lengthy warning, which makes it quite clear to the customer, Niemoeller says, that JLF products are not to be taken internally.

"Do not take orally (into your mouth) as a food, a beverage, a chew, a toothpick, a nutritional supplement, a medicine, a drug or an agent of suicide," reads a portion of the warning. "Do not eat, drink, inject, inhale, insert, absorb, snuff, snort, smoke, slam or ingest in any way. Do not stick, put, or throw into your or another person's mouth, nose, ear, eye, anus, urethra, vagina, or any other orifice or port-of-entry that may exist on your or another person's body."

For nearly 15 years no one called into question JLF and its unusual disclaimers.

In the late 1990s, however, several law enforcement agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Food and Drug Administration and the Indiana State Police, began to take a keen interest in JLF.

On Sept. 7, 2001, police served Niemoeller with a search and seizure warrant. They confiscated about $250,000 in merchandise, $1 million in assets, bank books, financial records, business ledgers, lists of addresses and phone numbers, documentation of business expenditures, travel documentation, computers and Niemoeller's 1998 Dodge Ram utility van.

Niemoeller wrote out a check to Indianapolis attorney Andrew Matternowsky, who handles a lot of drug and civil liberties cases. Later that week, police froze about $750,000 in Niemoeller's bank accounts, and the check to Matternowsky bounced. (Matternowsky remains unpaid.)

For nearly five months nothing happened. Then on Jan. 28, police arrested Niemoeller and served him with a 13-count federal grand jury indictment. Niemoeller spent the night in the Marion County jail. On March 18, he will stand trial in a federal district court in Indianapolis.

JLF's Non-Consumables

Niemoeller, the grandson of hard-working German immigrants, built up his business atop a pile of red amanitas mushrooms.

While the ritual use of these mushrooms as hallucinogens dates back 8,000 years, back when Siberian shamans ate the mushrooms to induce visionary trances, the use of these mushrooms for such a purpose is not recognized by federal drug laws.

According to Erowid.org, an extensive on-line library of drug information, amanita muscaria is perfectly legal in every country in the world -- with the sole exception of Israel.