Officers with Florala Police Department can now add illegal mushrooms to the long and increasingly varied list of narcotics found over the last few weekends.

FPD Sgt. Paul Adams said the drug, known as “shrooms,” is a powerful hallucinogen not common in Covington County.

“We had 25 drug-related arrests over the weekend,” Adams said. “All of them were marijuana-related traffic stops, but we also turned up a few pills and about an ounce of shrooms.”

FPD officer Jessica Lawhorn said she uncovered the drugs during a routine traffic stop Saturday morning.

“They ran a stop sign,” Lawhorn said of five men driving a black Cadillac CTS sedan. “I asked if they had anything they shouldn’t. I asked if they had alcohol. They wouldn’t look me in the eyes.”

Adams said Lawhorn then called on his canine unit to respond to the scene.

“They told her they didn’t have anything, but they wouldn’t consent to a search,” he said. “So we came over and the canine alerted on the vehicle.”

In addition to shrooms, Adams said the men were also found to be in possession of alcohol, approximately 1 ounce of marijuana and what he called a vaporizer box used to ingest the mushrooms.
“I wasn’t sure how it was used,” Adams said of the box. “It has a firing mechanism inside, but I had to look it up.”

Arrested were: Joshua Thomas of Nevada; Jacob Paxton, Matthew Paxton and Hayden Jenkins, all of Kansas; and Matthew Bush of Missouri. All suspects were charged with possession of marijuana II, minor in possession of alcohol and possession of drug paraphernalia. Charges of possession of a controlled substance, Lawhorn said, are pending.

Adams said all five men were born in 1994 and were under the age of 21.

“They were passing through town,” he said. “More of this spring break crowd we’ve been seeing.”