Yesterday, there was an article in the Charlotte Observer about something that happened in Catawba County, which isn't too far from me.

Officers went to a house to make an arrest for one thing, but ended up making an arrest for something much bigger!! When the man at the house answered the door, he said to the officers "I guess you're here for the opium..."

An acre of land had been planted with poppies with an estimated value of 500 MILLION $$$ or more!! I'm still in shock!

I have 2 acres...

 

'Tis the growing season.

If I may offer some advice;

1) Dont answer the door..but, if you must...

2) Make sure you have at least on titty plopped out for observation...a diversion tactic, if you will.

 

We travel past opium fields regularly here as farmers supplement their meager income and the devastation that this causes is disheartening and that it has found it's way to American soil is a concern .
Sterilized poppy's are one thing but these were not that .

 

But it was for personal recreational use officer. I swear!

 

Legalize poppies and we will get rid of the drug cartels.
Everyone should have the right to grow a few acres of poppies for personal use.

 

Lioness ya want one even funnier about that area????? On I40 outside of Catawba there is a billboard the reads 19 immigrants killed well I'll just show it..
MOST OF THOSE 19 WERE FROM THE VERY NATION THAT OUR PRESIDENT JUST GAVE A FULL MILITARY TO.

 

The guy should have kept his mouth shut. What North Carolina cop even knows what opium poppies look like?

 

Not saying it was, but he could have been growing the poppy's for the seeds. You know like a poppy seed kaiser roll. Or for Veterans Day. Wearing the red poppy over the heart...

 

I don't know very much about this area.

Are there poppies that produce seeds that can be made into opium and are there poppies that produce seeds that cannot ?

By the way I eat poppyseed bagels all the time and I've had to have a number of drug tests for job interviews. Never tested positive for anything .

I wonder if the heat destabilizes whatever the test tests for ( I would imagine it must be some protein that is heat labile) or if they come from poppies that are different .

 

Talk about value inflation. To get $500 million they must've backhoed the entire plant and all dirt touched by the roots, thrown that in a dumptruck, then weighed the dumptruck.

 

Nothing like that, just promoting some very substantial off the wall backwoods police work.

 

It always looked like too much work for what you would get out of a few acres of poppies.
How many acres would it take to make enough opium for one person?

 

It's a sad fact that it was 19 Muslim immigrants. And yet it seems a lot of people have forgotten. Never forget 9/11.

 

Yeah, true. They probably had the whole department stand on that dumptruck too.

 

Proud as peacocks.

 

You can buy poppy seeds from many seed catalogs. People grow them all the time.

 

I have 4 maybe five of them.

Someone said in here the ones we buy here are sterile, hell, I dont know.

I can grow crack, never could grow heroin.

 

Only one species of poppy is used for drugs. It's quasi-legal to grow, you just can't be like "sup making opium #19thcenturychina"

 

It was almost 3 years ago that the Agriculture Department stopped tobacco subsidies, so a poor farmer has to do something. As farming goes, opium is pretty labor intensive. Every single poppy bud has to be scratched before it blooms, then you go back and collect the sap that bleeds from the cut. That's just to get raw opium. Extracting heroin or morphine is more work. It's a lot more work than marijuana or cooking meth.

 

With feelings like they are today about slavery I don't see poppy growing ever becoming a cash crop.