Graffiti is vandalism, i.e., a property crime. Poaching, by definition, is hunting an animal that is restricted for varying reasons, from being a protected species to herd management, etc. It's effectively taking something that doesn't belong to you.

In this case, he did break the law by picking mushrooms where it was specifically prohibited, and it would be reasonable to cite him for that fact.

But it wasn't about theft, it was about the fact that he wanted to ingest a compound which would alter his state of consciousness. That should not be a crime.

Thank you for agreeing with my point that there are more ways to judge the validity of a law than its ability to protect us.

I list more examples at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15052587 .

Yeah. Laws don't have to make us safer, they can have other benefits.

The U.S. Constitution might be a good place to start talking about what laws should do. It says, "...form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..."

No, it isn't. The U.S. Constitution as originally written specifically to limit federal power.

The 10th amendment says: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

It wasn't not written to be a general-purpose commentary about what laws should be.

Remember, it was also written to allow people to be property. It also says that there is freedom of religion, but that was at the federal level. Some states had official state churches for a few decades more.