# One acre of poppies valued at $500M. Explain the math. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 1, 2017, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810 "2017-06-01T02:05:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/1 "2017-06-01T02:05:50Z")
You may or may not have seen the news article. [$500M poppy bust west of Charlotte is a true oddity for North Carolina](http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article152855019.html) [Cite for one acre](http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article152129627.html). 2000 plants. _pulls up calculator_… That’s $250k each. I’m used to drug bust/confiscation articles maximizing the cash figure to the final street sales value, but I can’t find any creative accounting to stretch this far. I’ve waited a week to see if any correction was published but this seems to be the final word. I’m not any sort of expert on heroin production but Google research gives me numbers that an acre will render from a quarter to a full kilogram of heroin. [Havocscope](http://www.havocscope.com/black-market-prices/heroin-prices/) claims that a gram sells for $110 to $200 in the US so 110k to 200k for a kilo. So I can’t even find support that the value would approach 500k, let alone 500M as reported in the links. Anyone have any suggestions or insight? Any DEA agents in the crowd? ---
**Author:** ![boffking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/858c86/32.png) [@boffking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boffking)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/2 "2017-06-01T02:32:30Z")
Maybe somebody just got their symbols confused. A thousand dollars can be written as either $M or $K, and $MM is used for millions. Perhaps the writer knew the acre was worth a few hundred thousand, and somebody assumed that everyone would know what they meant by “$500M”. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/3 "2017-06-01T02:35:55Z")
If you goolge “catawba opium”, the story has been picked by many major news sites, always citing the $500 million figure. It’s a little bizarre that so many journalists have unquestioningly reproduced a figure that’s so obviously wrong by many orders of magnitude. Some versions say that the harvested poppy plants weighed 2,000 pounds. Perhaps somebody multiplied this by the street value of pure _heroin_ per pound? It still seems high, but perhaps that error gets you to the order of magnitude. ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/4 "2017-06-01T02:42:54Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > It’s a little bizarre that so many journalists have unquestioningly reproduced a figure that’s so obviously wrong by many orders of magnitude. That’s what they’re trained for. ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/5 "2017-06-01T02:49:06Z")
> [@boffking](#): > > Maybe somebody just got their symbols confused. > A thousand dollars can be written as either $M or $K, and $MM is used for millions. > Perhaps the writer knew the acre was worth a few hundred thousand, and somebody assumed that everyone would know what they meant by “$500M”. Nobody in the United states would use “M” for thousands. “$500M” is clearly, unambiguously “500 million” here. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/6 "2017-06-01T02:53:15Z")
Just remember, these are the same people who will pull a pot plant out of the ground, roots and ball of dirt included, weigh it, then declare that it is worth $5,000 per pound. Apparently roots, stalk and all. Cop Math. ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/7 "2017-06-01T02:56:52Z")
Here I was hoping there was some new super heroin I hadn’t heard of. I have 60 acres and would have had a whole new retirement plan… Kidding. I fully support capital punishment for the top of the chain producers/suppliers of hard drugs. ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/8 "2017-06-01T03:01:53Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > Just remember, these are the same people who will pull a pot plant out of the ground, roots and ball of dirt included, weigh it, then declare that it is worth $5,000 per pound. Apparently roots, stalk and all. > > Cop Math. > [@](#): > > The state Department of Revenue estimated the value of the harvested plants in Catawba County at $559.5 million, Hickory Daily Record reported, upping investigators’ original estimate of $500 million. I would hope that the Department of Revenue wouldn’t be that incompetent, but you never know. I’d still like to look at how they arrived at these numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/9 "2017-06-01T03:49:14Z")
Can’t help, busy planting! ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/10 "2017-06-01T03:57:09Z")
> [@Projammer](#): > > I would hope that the Department of Revenue wouldn’t be that incompetent, but you never know. I’d still like to look at how they arrived at these numbers. It’s not incompetence. That’s what the law (in Australia) allows the police to do - weigh the whole marijuana plant, root-ball and all, to determine how much “marijuana” you were in posession of. ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/11 "2017-06-01T04:01:54Z")
So maybe not incompetence, but artificially inflating the numbers which casts suspicion on any other claims they may make IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![Elemenopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b5e925/32.png) [@Elemenopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elemenopy)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/12 "2017-06-01T04:13:11Z")
Can I digress a bit? How legal is growing poppies in the U.S.? The article mentioned a difference between “opium” and “ornamental” poppies, but what exactly does that mean? I’ve seen “Papaver somniferum” for sale many times online, so I assumed that even that varietal is at least quasi-legal. Also, many years ago, my grandmother grew a nice little patch of poppies (“for tea”!?) and I may or may not have collected a useful substance from them…how illegal would that have been? No idea whether they were ornamental or not. At any rate, the article is very confusing. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/13 "2017-06-01T04:34:09Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > Cop Math. To be fair, it’s government math; IRS, body counts, oil spills, no need to rouse the masses with needless accuracy. I would imagine those kind of numbers would see a lot of people cultivating 1/4, 1/8, even 1/16 of an acre plots. 250k for one plant? Sure your pipeline is a problem, but how many people would be willing to grow a single plant for 1/10th of that. ---
**Author:** ![mikecurtis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikecurtis/32/3284_2.png) [@mikecurtis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mikecurtis)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/14 "2017-06-01T05:17:55Z")
An acre of poppies will yield approx 1 kilo of (pure) opium; with maybe 3 harvests a year under optimal conditions. Street value of opium is around $30/g. so assuming 50% purity that could fetch $180k/yr on the street. that’s a long way from $500k for the farmer. Sorry, I don’t have the numbers for heroin. mc ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/15 "2017-06-01T08:50:35Z")
I’m sure there’s something wrong with the numbers in general, but just to note - 2000 plants on an acre of land is about two square yards per plant - which would be an unlikely sparseness of planting for pretty nearly any annual crop ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/16 "2017-06-01T11:30:56Z")
No offense to our boys in blue, but if they could do even simple math, they wouldn’t be cops. ---
**Author:** ![Waxwinged](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@Waxwinged](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waxwinged)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/17 "2017-06-01T12:44:24Z")
> [@Elemenopy](#): > > Can I digress a bit? How legal is growing poppies in the U.S.? The article mentioned a difference between “opium” and “ornamental” poppies, but what exactly does that mean? I’ve seen “Papaver somniferum” for sale many times online, so I assumed that even that varietal is at least quasi-legal. Also, many years ago, my grandmother grew a nice little patch of poppies (“for tea”!?) and I may or may not have collected a useful substance from them…how illegal would that have been? No idea whether they were ornamental or not. > > At any rate, the article is very confusing. Folks are welcome to correct me if I’m wrong, but-- the ornamental poppies are the “driving 5 miles over the speed limit” of illegal plant cultivation. You’re not supposed to do it for the sake of opium production, but noone is going to give a damn if you have a few plants in a garden setting. ---
**Author:** ![Orwell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/dfb087/32.png) [@Orwell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orwell)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/18 "2017-06-01T13:53:17Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > It’s a little bizarre that so many journalists have unquestioningly reproduced a figure that’s so obviously wrong by many orders of magnitude. You really find this to be bizarre? Law enforcement and journalism are extremely prone to exaggeration and hyperbole. Driving over the speed limit is road rage. More than two guns is an arsenal. An 18 year old with nudie pics of his 17 year old girlfriend is a pedophile. A catfish thrown onto a skating rink is an “instrument of crime”. While your example is pushing the envelope, I always shake my head at the “values” reported for drug busts. It’s insane and obviously untrue in most cases. And “journalists” report it with a straight face instead of showing how absurd the figures and charges are. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/19 "2017-06-01T15:47:18Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I’m sure there’s something wrong with the numbers in general, but just to note - 2000 plants on an acre of land is about two square yards per plant - which would be an unlikely sparseness of planting for pretty nearly any annual crop Other articles have said 2,000 _pounds_, not plants. That might lead to a more reasonable planting density. Still doesn’t explain $500M, though. ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810/20 "2017-06-01T16:20:29Z")
In John Sandford’s “Secret Prey” it turned out that ’ “Fifty seven old ladies in the Mountbatten Garden Club,” Del said. “I got the club list. … It turns out they’ve been growing poppies for years” ’ [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-acre-of-poppies-valued-at-500m-explain-the-math/787810.md?page=2)