You know how you get some bread with poppy seeds on, well I was wondering if you can get bread with opium poppy seeds? And do the normal poppy seeds have any opium compounds in them?
Poppy seeds used for bagels and other culinary applications are opium poppy seeds. Yes, they contain small amounts of opiates.
Usually, they’re sterilized before they’re sold, so you can’t buy a bag of poppy seeds at the grocery store and grow opium poppies. There have been incidents when importers have been slapped for not making sure that they were selling sterile seeds.
I see. I was of the understanding that not all poppies are opium poppies. Why do they use opium poppy seeds?
However, growing opium poppies is not illegal in most areas.
Cutting into the seed pods, however, is very illegal. The latex that oozes out of the cut seed pod as it grows is what opium is made from. If the local drug enforcement folks notice your poppies (and they will, trust me - poppies are not subtle plants, nor will they grow indoors) they may check your seed pods tp make sure they aren’t slashed.
But bread poppyseeds I’ve seen are from Breadseed Poppies , which grow only trace amounts of opiates.
Oh, and you can order opioum poppy seeds from just about any gardening site.
Cecil Adams’ take on this subject is in this column.
I have opium poppies growing as weeds in my vegetable patch; They’re quite common around here - I can’t imagine it being all that likely that anyone would notice a few of the pods being scored for latex (even though my next-door-but-one neighbour is a policeman) - not that I’m going to do this, or even advocate it.