On Sat, 24 Apr 2004 01:17:28 GMT, "Pam - gardengal"
opined:

If you read the Controlled Substance Act, it makes no differentiation as to
the purpose for growing the plants - they are simply illegal to grow in this
country. Obviously, DEA and other law enforcement agencies have other fish
to fry rather than SWAT-teaming down on the hobby gardener and as I clearly
stated previously, someone somewhere is growing them commercially for seed
production, if for nothing else. Nonetheless, growing the plant is illegal.
Unless you care to reinterpret the law.


I still cannot believe not even as much as an apology to me. Hmm, I thought you
were different. Guess not.

(paghat) expounded:

Please find the clipping quick! And where exactly is "around here"? If you
live on Malta, yep, they're illegal even as garden ornmentals!

My location is in my signature, it was in The Patriot Ledger but
damned if I can find it right now. It's in a pile. Somewhere G

--
Ann, Gardening in zone 6a
Just south of Boston, MA
********************************

"Bill Oliver" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Vox Humana wrote:


Do you have a citation for this? It sounds like an urban legend to me.


I don't know about GW, but when I was in the Army, I was specifically
warned against eating food poppy seeds because it gave a positive
on the random drug tests.

See: http://www.snopes.com/toxins/poppy.htm


I'm not questioning the fact that it may distort a drug test. I just can't
believe that the Vice President of the US is made to pee into a cup for drug
testing.

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 20:55:36 GMT, agnatha3141
opined:

does anybody know for certain what kind of poppies are legal and what
kind are not in the us? i read in a past post that poppies are legal to
grow as long as you dont go making heroin from them, but is that
definately true?
i planted some poppy seeds, and it has been about four months. i think
that blooming time is near, and i dont want to get arrested. what is
the deal with poppies?

The only one is Oriental, but I grow them and nobody arrests me. Catalogs
sell
them everywhere

nope. that's wrong.

Papaver oriental is the perennial poppy; salmon, pink, red, and white.
Papaver somniferum is the opium poppy, an annual, pink flowers only.
Papaver nudicaule is icelandic poppy, sometimes called champagne bubbles;
pink, yellow, white, and orange.
Eschultzia california is california poppy; orange or yellow; hybrid thai
silk poppies, ruffled pink, salmon, yellow, white, and red flowers.

In article ,
(Fire Erowid) wrote:

[much unsubstantiated stuff clipped]
The laws against them are not generally enforced. That does
not mean they are not illegal.

While it's nice to see someone posting replies who has a deep abiding
interest in recreational drugs (Usenet being the ultimate democracy after
all), all you really needed to do was quote the relevant portion of the
Act that makes it perfectly clear the plant itself illegal. You never
have, & never will, because there is no part of the Controlled Substance
Act that states this.

Note 1) The Act itself is clear as to what concentration of specific
opiates would have to be present for a substance to be illegal; 2) which
for opiates is specifically "90 milligrams per dosage unit, with an equal
or greater quantity of an isoquinoline alkaloid of opium" required to
reach a level of illegality; & 3) no poppy reaches the concentrations that
would define them as illegal.

The Act does make them illegal IF AND WHEN they are used for an illegal
purpose (or attempted to be used for an illegal purpose; gardened opium
poppies are not actually a source of opiates, but attempting to discover
otherwise would be enough to render them suddenly illegal).

[more unsubstantiated stuff clipped]
just to be clear...plants and chemicals which are in Schedule
II - V are also illegal to possess without a precription. Penalties
vary, depending on the schedule and the quantity possessed...but they
can still be very much illegal to possess.

Was your qualifier "CAN be" a confession that you're aware they're
otherwise legal, or just bad writing?

Again, you can make this statement in your own words, but you have neither
here nor at your web pages quoted it from the Act, because it isn't there.
It amounts to what you believe, or what you have heard within the
recreational drug advocacy community. If you could've quoted it in law you
would've done so just now -- indeed, you would have done so long before
now, but you never could do so because it is a phantom law.

You can visit the DEA's list of scheduled substances at:
http://www.dea.gov/pubs/scheduling.html

Search for "poppy" and you'll see the entry for "Opium Poppy - Papaver
somniferum".

You have not referenced a law, nor even a list of banned substances, but
only a list derived from the Controlled Subtance Act. The list is not a
law, & the list explicitely states that it includes parent sources of
scheduled drugs ( Papaver is NOT a drug but is a parent source of many
drugs; it is only a "scheduled drug" insofar as IF it were attempted to be
used illegally, that would make it illegal; it is otherwise not a
controlled substance & gardeners & growers & nurseries, unlike scientific
researchers, are not required to register their use, as no law even
regulates such use, let alone bans it).

If any congressional Act actually states that opium poppies grown for
ornamental purposes is illegal, you should quote that precisely. The
extant law makes it very clear that intent is part of the law. Hell, even
steer manure & motor oil are illegal if you intend to make bombs out of
it, not otherwise. If opium poppies were illegal it wouldn't be possible
to buy them in every county & city of this nation from above-board garden
centers & growers; if such a banning law existed, it would be easily
quoted & sourced. The urban folklore on this is rampant because amateur
journalists & mistaken editorialists spread urban folklore as truth. You
have failed to quote a law because you couldn't find one, & yet you
persist in believing it must exist somewhere in an Act from which it
cannot be quoted. No heroin addict or opium smoker in America ever got
their shit from gardened opium poppies, & while laws can be very stupid,
the CAS isn't quite that stupid.

Papaver is included as a Schedule II "drug" (though it is not a drug)
because in any medical or scientific experiments done legally with
Papaver, it is that context controlled by law; & if any opiate salt or
chemical is extracted or synthesized from it, that too is illegal unless
registered for scientific purpose. Iin these contexts only the opium poppy
is itself illegal, just like possession of bags of manure becomes illegal
if you intended to make bombs out of it, but manure is otherwise yours to
revel in, & opium poppies are legal to sell, buy, & grow. This is
multiply-explained in the Acts' numerous redundancies, yet in all its
redundancies, it found no room to state that the plant is illegal in any
other context, or in all contexts, but only in the explicit contexts
stated. The law is NOT "schizophrenic" as your website article so absurdly
puts it; said schizophrenia is the article-writer's projection born of a
confusing their superimposing on the the CAS some deeply believed urban
folklore that just isn't in the actual legislation

The Act's preamble "This law is a consolidation of numerous laws
regulating the manufacture and distribution of narcotics, stimulants,
depressants, hallucinogens, anabolic steroids, and chemicals used in the
illicit production of controlled substances" is not confusing in this
matter. It leaves out reference to the plants per se, because if plants
with a POTENTIAL for extracting those sorts of drugs would include scores
of plants I can harvest in any field or forest or desert growing wild, &
only those which function as drugs as picked & misused fit any legal
definition of "drugs." Peyote would in & of itself without further
processing fit the Acts' preamble about the Act's purpose & content.
Marijuana, too, fits the preamble, without further processing. But opium
poppies are harmless & you cannot get you stoned or sick on them without
considerable processing. If such processing is attempted, despite the fact
that temperate-grown poppies lack the required alkaloids, the poppies
would upon that mere attempt of an illegal usage come under the Controlled
Substance Act & become illegal due to the misuse & abuse. To extract or
synthesize opiates, all sorts of otherwise legal chemicals would be
required, & each & every one of them would become illegal because of the
illegal usage, not otherwise.

Since it is a topic close to your heart, perhaps you'd do well to hire an
expert attorney willing to put his name to a little article which would
sort out the strictly LEGAL issues for you apropos of the actual CSA, so
you can correct your website's misinformation & cease to confuse folklore
& non-legal lists & editorials for the actual law! You clearly are no
expert, not even slightly expert; I cannot claim to be an expert either,
though I certainly can see that no part of the Act bans the cultivation of
poppies for ornamental purposes. But since neither of us are experts,
perhaps you should hire one, so that a definitive redaction of the Act &
its meaning would be available for all the dumbass folklorists out there
who can't tell fantasy from law.

Think about it kiddo -- if you could've cited this alleged law FROM the
Act itself, you wouldn't be desparately avoiding any actual quotations
from it. The fact that poppies are cited as a source of scheduled drugs, &
fall under the Act if they are used for any drug-related purpose, does not
make poppies themselves illegal. The test is as I said it would be: If it
were true that poppies were illegal but the law doesn't have time or
energy to stop nurseries from selling them & gardeners from growing them,
then take some marijuana plants down to the same nurseries & sell them to
the same gardeners & see what happens. When a plant IS illegal, there is
not the slightest hint of reluctance to prosecute the matter to the full
extent of the law.

And, while I'm mostly going to ignore the insulting comments about
those at Erowid.org being stoners and pro-drug...please understand
that we are serious about our work, dedicated to providing accurate
information, and are certainly not "stoners".

Perhaps a little less deadpan seriousness & a lot more humor would serve
you better.

Personally I collect opium literature & hashish literature, & I hugely
enjoy its influence on art. Unfortunately the lives of the influenced
authors & artists were invariably harmed by their habi. While some of the
beauty they left behind redeemed them, they most certainly did require
that redemption, for since little else about them was admirable. Geza
Csath was one of the world's greatest surrealist writers inspired by his
laudenum addiction; but it was not admirable him sitting at his kitchen
table in his own shit until his ass was infected with soars. Anna Kavan
turned her pain into some of the most beautiful magic realist literature
of all time, but her paranoia made life hell for her, & people who did not
know that she was shooting up every time she had a paranoid fit & returned
from the bathroom much better just thought she was crazy.

So recreational drug advocacy is never undertaken by anyone worthy of
respect, though it is an equal or greater folly for legislators to make
such things as recreational drug use & suicide illegal. So while I
disrespect the thuggish policing authorities more than the nitwit stoners,
only the tiny handful who succeed at something spectacularly creative
within their drug abuse are wholly forgiveable, whether it's something
genuinely great like Poe created before he died for his addictions, or
something rather stupid but enjoyable like the Fabulous Furry Freak
Brothers -- which at least notices that it's dorks who recreate with
drugs. Those are not "insulting comments" but the truth.

-paghat the ratgirl

peace,
fire

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

In article , "Vox Humana"
wrote:

"Bill Oliver" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Vox Humana wrote:


Do you have a citation for this? It sounds like an urban legend to me.


I don't know about GW, but when I was in the Army, I was specifically
warned against eating food poppy seeds because it gave a positive
on the random drug tests.

See: http://www.snopes.com/toxins/poppy.htm


I'm not questioning the fact that it may distort a drug test. I just can't
believe that the Vice President of the US is made to pee into a cup for drug
testing.

I could imagine him agreeing to pee the cup in the spirit of "To prove
it's a good thing, even I will do it. Then every damnone of you will do it
or you'e fired, & any who don't pass the test will be shot dead in the
white house rose garden."

What appears to be a fact found in Bush's very strange non-service service
record in the Texas Air National Guard was his suspension for refusal to
take a mandatory drug test -- this at a time when he was known to be a
raging alcoholic, which frequently goes hand in hand with other
recreational drug abuses, so it's easy to imagine why he'd prefer
suspension over getting tested. Suspending him was hardly punishment from
his point of view, since he almost never showed up for duty anyway.

See text of London Times artical "Bush Dodged Drug Test"
http://www.newsmax.com/showinside.sh...00/6/17/220615

I suspect he could pass it now, not that I think his synpses are all
hooked up right from his past substance abuses. I mean, either he's lost a
few too many connecting threads in the old noodle, or he's just plane
evil.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

wrote in message
...
Papaver oriental is the perennial poppy; salmon, pink, red, and white.
Papaver somniferum is the opium poppy, an annual, pink flowers only.

Actually, papaver somniferum is available in pink, lavender, white, and
stained-glass window red. I have heard that here is one available now in a
blackish red as well. It is also availabe in single, half-double, fully
double, and frilly center versions. However, pink is probably the most
common color, with red second.

I would think if a farmer dedicates his farm, say 1000 acres to P.somniferum,
would be doing it for heroine production and would be in harsh violation of the
law. Seeds are sold in many catalogs for P. somniferum. Illegal or not, you'd
need quite a production company in order to grow enough to make a dent in the
heroine industry which comes from the middle east. No war on anything has been
able to stop production of heroine in the middle east, and it never will.


On 24 Apr 2004 16:58:07 -0700, (Fire Erowid) opined:

While I appreciate that the reading and interpretation of laws can be
very difficult, and I don't have a lot of time to try to sort this all
out for Paghat, I felt that I should post a short message here stating
that there is no question that Papaver somniferum is *technically*
illegal in the U.S.

The Opium Poppy - Papaver somniferum (both terms are used in the list
of schedules) are Schedule II in the United States. Schedule II
substances are illegal to buy or possess without a valid prescription,
and are illegal to sell without a DEA license (eg. both opium and
cocaine are schedule II). There are also significant DEA controls on
how Schedule II materials are produced and stored.

But laws are only as strong as enforcement. In the U.S., the
ornamental cultivation of P. somniferum is just about never
prosecuted. Now we could argue about the definition of "illegal" if
you'd like. It's an interesting question. If a law is never
enforced, is it still a law? But that's just semantics.

A few more comments below...


(paghat) wrote in message

But in the Act itself, the
phrase "except the seeds" occurs only in a glossary of the meaning of
terms used in the 1996 Act (and in other drug-related Acts of congress),
stating only that when the term "opium poppy" is used, they mean all parts
of P. smoniferum "except the seeds." It is not a legal statement, it is a
term definition.

Legal statements are all about definitions of terms. How terms used
in the law are officially and legally defined...defines the law.


http://www.erowid.org/plants/poppy/poppy_law.shtml
Internet sellers of opium poppy seeds are very careful to add legal
disclaimers, since all parts of the plants - except the seeds - are listed
as a controlled substance.

Again, you get yourself in trouble relying on secondary sources. The five
words this page quotes from the 1996 Act ("opium poppies and opium straw")
is from Schedule II of the Controlled Substance Act, is from a list that
includes material that have merely a "potential for abuse." Schedule I
lists what is actually illegal, & does not include opium poppies.

This is a big misunderstanding of the Scheduling system. Each
Schedule has it's own restrictions and requirements associated with
it. Schedule I substances are unique in that they are unable to be
prescribed by a doctor. But it's still illegal to possess a Schedule
II substance without a prescription. The best illustration of this is
the fact that both Cocaine and Opium are Schedule II.

Your unfortunate "citation" here follows up their misreading of the Act
with an admission of confusion: "There is some confusion in the law,
however, because opium-producing poppies are widely grown around the US
and Canada and the opium poppy seeds are omnipresent in cooking, breads,
and deserts." There is in realitiy no confusion in the law, only in people
who misunderstand the law, & your citation's explanation for this
non-existant contradiction is that "the law is schizophrenic" -- which is
laughable, because the law is coherent even if too complicated for the
stoner who wrote this page to remember one paragraph to the next.

Heh. If you think that laws are coherent...you clearly haven't read
them very closely. It is *common* for laws to conflict and/or for
laws to be interpreted or enforced differently by different
jurisdictions or at different times.

In describing laws, it is important to cite the text of the law, the
various interpretations of the law, and the actual manner in which the
laws are enforced. This gives a more complete picture of the status
of any given law.


Yet the final assessment on the page you liked is this: "If poppies are
grown as sources for opiates, there is no question that it violates the
CSA." That at least is correct. They are not otherwise illegal.

The laws against them are not generally otherwise enforced. That does
not mean they are not illegal.


If you read the Controlled Substance Act, it makes no differentiation as to
the purpose for growing the plants - they are simply illegal to grow in
this country.

Yes it does differentiate.

Please cite the passage of the CSA where it differentiates between
different purposes for growing Papaver somniferum. If such a passage
exists, I'd very much like to read it.


The Controlled Substance Act is THE relevant resource. Here it is for
those who want to go right to the source skipping amateur garden
web-essays & stoner assertions or even my own understanding of the Act:
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/agency/csa.htm

Important to note that the controlled substance act is amended
regularly. New substances are added and wordings and definitions are
changed. Even the version you point out is not current. It is the
schedules (I-V) that define what is currently illegal.


Nowhere in Schedual I is the plant OR the seeds stated to be illegal.

Again, just to be clear...plants and chemicals which are in Schedule
II - V are also illegal to possess without a precription. Penalties
vary, depending on the schedule and the quantity possessed...but they
can still be very much illegal to possess.

You can visit the DEA's list of scheduled substances at:
http://www.dea.gov/pubs/scheduling.html

Search for "poppy" and you'll see the entry for "Opium Poppy - Papaver
somniferum".

And, while I'm mostly going to ignore the insulting comments about
those at Erowid.org being stoners and pro-drug...please understand
that we are serious about our work, dedicated to providing accurate
information, and are certainly not "stoners".

peace,
fire

On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 03:44:28 GMT, opined:



On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 20:55:36 GMT, agnatha3141
opined:

does anybody know for certain what kind of poppies are legal and what
kind are not in the us? i read in a past post that poppies are legal to
grow as long as you dont go making heroin from them, but is that
definately true?
i planted some poppy seeds, and it has been about four months. i think
that blooming time is near, and i dont want to get arrested. what is
the deal with poppies?

The only one is Oriental, but I grow them and nobody arrests me. Catalogs
sell
them everywhere

nope. that's wrong.

Papaver oriental is the perennial poppy; salmon, pink, red, and white.
Papaver somniferum is the opium poppy, an annual, pink flowers only.
Papaver nudicaule is icelandic poppy, sometimes called champagne bubbles;
pink, yellow, white, and orange.
Eschultzia california is california poppy; orange or yellow; hybrid thai
silk poppies, ruffled pink, salmon, yellow, white, and red flowers.

Yes, I realize I mistakenly said the wrong thing. I knew what I wanted to say,
but I still wrote the incorrect thing. I've been chastised by someone I
considered a friend, all because I said I like someone on this newsgroup.

The extent of immaturity I have experienced online is getting worse and worse.
I post less and less. It's hateful, angry, and spiteful. I don't have it in me
any more.

The message
from escapee contains these words:

Yes, I realize I mistakenly said the wrong thing. I knew what I
wanted to say,
but I still wrote the incorrect thing. I've been chastised by someone I
considered a friend, all because I said I like someone on this newsgroup.

As a recent chastiser, I feel obliged to correct any mistaken
impression by other posters that you might be referring to myself. I
have never done anything to deserve the repulsive insult of being
considered your friend.

The extent of immaturity I have experienced online is getting worse
and worse.
I post less and less. It's hateful, angry, and spiteful. I don't
have it in me
any more.

Oh yes you do. When someone you like posts immature, spiteful verbal
abuse you give your encouragement and approval.

Janet.

I believe we aren't allowed to grow P. somniferum in bulk, even for
culinary use. Seeds in bulk (for spice sellers and bakers) are
imported.

Probably some from the Czech Republic, where they are also illegal. On drives
out into the county my Czech friends would point them out. They're a real
staple of Czech pastries--if you ate a poppy-seed kolach then had to produce a
urine specimen, DEA would put you under the jail.


zemedelec

The message
from pamfree (Zemedelec) contains these words:

I believe we aren't allowed to grow P. somniferum in bulk, even for
culinary use. Seeds in bulk (for spice sellers and bakers) are
imported.

Probably some from the Czech Republic, where they are also illegal. On
drives
out into the county my Czech friends would point them out. They're a real
staple of Czech pastries--if you ate a poppy-seed kolach then had to
produce a
urine specimen, DEA would put you under the jail.

Poppy seeds (and plants) are perfectly legal here in the UK, and we
eat loads of them on/in bread and cakes etc. AFAIK, heroin/morphine is
derived from the sap of P somniferum, not its seeds. Just as toxic
substances are present in certain parts of potatoes, apples, tomatoes,
or rhubarb, and not in other parts of the same plant.


Janet

"tmtresh" wrote in
:

Or could it be that the state doesn't really give a curse about our
hurting ourselves

Oh, I don't know. What about all the seat belt laws and helmet laws? I
think legislators just like to legislate. It doesn't have to make
sense.

if you are taxpayer and have to pay for enforcement or put up with any of
fallout (e.g. overzealous people looking for their superhero costume in an
okra patch), it should make sense. and when it doesn't, people will
usually just let it slide, because there's really nothing you can do about
it.

On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:41:13 +0100, Janet Baraclough..
opined:

The message
from escapee contains these words:

Yes, I realize I mistakenly said the wrong thing. I knew what I
wanted to say,
but I still wrote the incorrect thing. I've been chastised by someone I
considered a friend, all because I said I like someone on this newsgroup.

As a recent chastiser, I feel obliged to correct any mistaken
impression by other posters that you might be referring to myself. I
have never done anything to deserve the repulsive insult of being
considered your friend.

The extent of immaturity I have experienced online is getting worse
and worse.
I post less and less. It's hateful, angry, and spiteful. I don't
have it in me
any more.

Oh yes you do. When someone you like posts immature, spiteful verbal
abuse you give your encouragement and approval.

Janet.

Sorry Janet, not everything is about you.

In article Iejic.10848$cF6.465992@attbi_s04, "Pam - gardengal"
wrote:

"paghat" wrote in message
news
In article jj9ic.8032$0u6.1529055@attbi_s03, "Pam - gardengal"
wrote:

"escapee" wrote in message
[clips]

I am constantly amazed at the amount of misinformation that gets
disseminated through this group.

Quite right! Though I trust you're not leaving out your own ability to
disseminate misinformation, as you do it as readily as Escapee or any of
us! As for example:

Papaver somniferum, aka the breadseed, sleep,
peony-flowered or opium poppy IS illegal, but enforcement is, at the
best,
sporadic and half-hearted.

Papaver somniferum is legal in the majority of countries, including the
United States; some of the few countries that ban them do so because they
are noxious weeds or could displace native poppies (they're illegal to
propogate in Finland & Norway). In the USA, what the purchaser does with
the poppies is what defines legality or illegality. As ornamentals,
legal. To attempt to extract alkaloids for use as a drug, illegal,

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/...w_timeline.htm
pay particular attention to 1942

All you really needed to do was apologize to Escapee. But oh well. You can
site 500 baseless website assertions of illegality, or I could cite 500
equally amateurish websites of its legality, but all that really needs to
be cited is the actual Controlled Substances Act which does not make it
illegal to grow opium poppies for ornamental purposes. The 1942 Act you
prefer is not the relevant law; the relevant law is the 1996 Act updated
from 1985, both versions missing from this ridiculous time line you just
cited & put such stock in. Though I doubt the 1942 Act made growing the
species ornamentally either, I've only read the 1996 Act, & it definitely
does not make this plant illegal.

It is a misunderstanding of the 1996 act that has led to the widespread
urban legend that all parts of the plant are illegal EXCEPT the seeds.
This urban legend supposedly explains why if it's so awfully illegal to
have them, they're so easy to buy, especially from domestic seed companies
which sell the seeds willynilly (the urban legend ignores how you can also
get the potted plants from garden shops). But in the Act itself, the
phrase "except the seeds" occurs only in a glossary of the meaning of
terms used in the 1996 Act (and in other drug-related Acts of congress),
stating only that when the term "opium poppy" is used, they mean all parts
of P. smoniferum "except the seeds." It is not a legal statement, it is a
term definition.

http://www.freep.com/features/living...6_20010316.htm

An amateur reporter's second-hand pop-article with only vague allusions
not to any law but to a DEA request to seed vendors outside the US -- this
is a poor substitute for what the 1996 Act actually states. If we were to
do dueling pop-websites without an iota of credibility, the incorrect
article you've cited itself provides only one source other than a
seed-catalog disclaimer -- & that only other source was www.opium.org --
which in fact states that Papaver somniferum is legal throughout the
United States. But that's not a substitute for the actual 1996 Act either,
so I won't play duelling dumbass-websites with you. I'm sure you had to
skip over a lot of them yourself doing your google search for that amateur
reporter's wildly inaccurate non-resource.

Interestingly the article you relied on contradicts itself in asserting
that all parts of the plant are illegal to own or grow, then in another
paragraph repeats the urban legend that the seeds are legal but growing
them is not. The article was obviously cobbled together very quickly & not
even proofread for coherence.

It is at least true the DEA asked foreign seed importers (but without
legal means of enforcing the request) to no longer import opium poppy
seeds to the US, & British companies complied, & made note of their
voluntary compliance in a catalog, & thereby started a parallel urban
legend to the "only the seeds are legal" legend. The plant & seeds remain
easily available from domestic vendors because while the DEA has all the
time in the world to make polite requests overseas, they have no legal
authority to impose such requests on American citizens to cease legal
activities.

The article obviously never used the primary document to understand the
foreign seed-catalog disclaimer, & it even misrepresented the content of
the disclaimer that inspired the rancid editorial. Almost half the 1996
Act is devoted to import/export law. None of the sections of the Act about
importation & exportation apply to domestic seeds or plants. The amateur
reporter misquoted or misrepresented the British seed catalog disclaimer,
because the disclaimer does not say it is illegal to ship the seeds to
America; it says it is EITHER illegal OR problematical to export them to a
handful of countries, including the United States. Importation into the
US happens to be legal, & the one thing the amateur garden reporter's
article gets right is that UK vendors no longer ship them to America
VOLUNTARILY, rather than in adherance to any law.

http://www.erowid.org/plants/poppy/poppy_law.shtml
Internet sellers of opium poppy seeds are very careful to add legal
disclaimers, since all parts of the plants - except the seeds - are listed
as a controlled substance.

Again, you get yourself in trouble relying on secondary sources. The five
words this page quotes from the 1996 Act ("opium poppies and opium straw")
is from Schedule II of the Controlled Substance Act, is from a list that
includes material that have merely a "potential for abuse." Schedule I
lists what is actually illegal, & does not include opium poppies.

Your unfortunate "citation" here follows up their misreading of the Act
with an admission of confusion: "There is some confusion in the law,
however, because opium-producing poppies are widely grown around the US
and Canada and the opium poppy seeds are omnipresent in cooking, breads,
and deserts." There is in realitiy no confusion in the law, only in people
who misunderstand the law, & your citation's explanation for this
non-existant contradiction is that "the law is schizophrenic" -- which is
laughable, because the law is coherent even if too complicated for the
stoner who wrote this page to remember one paragraph to the next.

Yet the final assessment on the page you liked is this: "If poppies are
grown as sources for opiates, there is no question that it violates the
CSA." That at least is correct. They are not otherwise illegal.

If you read the Controlled Substance Act, it makes no differentiation as to
the purpose for growing the plants - they are simply illegal to grow in this
country.

Yes it does differentiate. So be careful telling someone who has read the
Act she better read it when you yourself either never bothered, or read it
very carelessly & cited only secondary commentaries about it. I would
never claim a belief in my own infallibility as big as yours, but at least
I did read the Act, & feel I understand the greater part of it. You relied
too much on that pro-drug website erowid.org -- I love that website, but
its members are either too stoned or too paranoid (justifiably given the
nature of the War on Drugs) to understand much of what they read. Soners
are not a reliable substitute for reading the Act itself -- the current
one, not the historical one you cited for 1942, which I also doubt you
read or you wouldn't've cited it on a half-assed drug timeline concocted
by yet another stoner. It's awfully selective of you to NOT include the
other cool stoner website, opium.org, which strongly disagrees with erowid
-- dueling stoner websites are so cool, but not reliable substitutes for
the Act if one wishes to know what the Act actually renders illegal.

The Controlled Substance Act is THE relevant resource. Here it is for
those who want to go right to the source skipping amateur garden
web-essays & stoner assertions or even my own understanding of the Act:
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/agency/csa.htm

Legalese can certainly be difficult at times or attorneys wouldn't be
needed to uncoil the labyrinth, & in understanding such a document I
wouldn't claim the degree of infalibilitiy you seem to feel you possess
even while viewing it through the warped lense of a stoner website. Still,
as Acts go, this one is FAIRLY comprehensible to lay understanding.

Nowhere in it are opium poppies per se rendered illegal to own, sell, or
grow. Opium poppies are mentioned exactly twice, once in the glossary, &
second in a list of material with a "potential" for abuse. The glossary
includes the phrase "except the seeds" which seems to have given rise to
the urban legend that the seeds are legal but planting them is illegal.
And if one is merely skimming the Act instead of reading it, the Section
II list that appends both legal & illegal substances with potential for
abuse could be misread as an extension of the Section I list of what is
actually illegal. What is illegal essentially are the opiates, opium,
esters, ethers, isomers, salts, & all chemical extracts actual or
synthesized from opium poppies -- pointedly missing from the list are not
the poppies themselves, which are legal. Nowhere in Schedual I is the
plant OR the seeds stated to be illegal.

The Act further includes legal specific milligram measurements for the
alkaloids. These have to be reached or exceeded for opium to become
illegal. The plants themselves never possess the alkaloids or compounds in
sufficient concentration to in themselves reach a point of illegality.

None of the Act's complex statements about importation into the United
States really apply to home-grown poppies. But it is interesting in that
even importation is in fact legal, but as the foreign vendors have stated,
"problematical." Because the DEA asked them to VOLUNTARILY cease to do so,
they buckled under to politcal pressure, not legal pressure. Domestic
vendors haven't been pressured because there is no legal basis to ask
Americans to cease legal activity.

There are aspects of the import/export portion of the Act that are VERY
problematical because the Attorney General has almost carte blance
authority to impose random or even nonsensical registration procedures
against any importer/exporter, & to make up new regulations for how to
register as an importer/exporter without congressional oversight. Vis, in
section 957 of chapter 13 of the Act, the Attorney General can impose
unspecified requirements "if he finds it consistent with the public health
and safety" to do so. On that basis, importers of white sugar, which is
unhealthy for people, could be harrassed by demands of special
registration procedures. A restraint on harrassing importers is included
in the Act, in that an importer or exporter of legal substances with
potential for illegal use are expempted if he is "acting in the usual
course of his business" rather than illegally, so presumedly the Attorney
General cannot start making strange registration demands against ordinary
seed vendors overseas. But it's just the sort of thing attorneys argue in
court, by which time a lot of trouble might be caused innocent vendors, so
it's easier to just comply "voluntarily."

Even for domestic growing of any plant with mind-altering potential, there
are problematical parts of the Act, to date only applied to marijuana
growers, that provide for seizure of property even without proof of guilt
of anything. This part of the Act is open to abuse, & was terribly abused
in the past when law enforcement came down hard on harmless potheads who
only grew enough to feed their own addiction, but lost their houses
without ever being found guilty of anything; or landlords lost housing for
not knowing what was going on inside their renters' spaces. This has been
widely criticized as unconstitional & is not presently occurring, but that
part of the Act seems not to have been overturned (though missing from
this web text are footnotes on which parts have in fact been repealed
since 1996; it includes only what was repealed betweem 1985 & 1996).

Obviously, DEA and other law enforcement agencies have other fish
to fry rather than SWAT-teaming down on the hobby gardener and as I clearly
stated previously, someone somewhere is growing them commercially for seed
production, if for nothing else. Nonetheless, growing the plant is illegal.
Unless you care to reinterpret the law.

Since "the law" in this case the Act to which I gave a link, & it does not
make it illegal to own, sell, or grow opium poppies for ornamental
purposes, it is hardly necessary to "reinterpret" any of it. If you would
read the Act itself instead of an amateur journalist's editorial based on
information from a British seed-catalog disclaimer, or read the Act itself
without the interpretation you found on a drug-advocacy website written by
stoners with no short-term memories left, you might've known all that was
required was an apology to Escapee for your crabbing about disseminating
falsehoods, in the very breath that you disseminate your own.

However, if you really do believe the Feds are so overworked with such
"bigger fish to fry" as bong vendors & tobacco shops, therefore existing
laws against poppies can't be enforced, you need to rethink how the War on
Drugs has worked to date. You seriously think they're so overworked from
cracking down on bong vendors that nurseries slip under the radar?? Well
then, try selling something ACTUALLY illegal, like one nice little
marijuana plant "for ornamental use only," & see what happens. Disclaimers
up the wazoo won't keep you out of deep caca.

As it stands, opium poppy plants AND seeds are easily available in every
state, every county, every city, in garden centers & Church plant sales &
plant catalogs because they are legal, NOT because cracking down on bongs
is so much more important. The only reason they crack d own on bongs
(despite that they certainly can be used with legal substances) is because
interstate sale of bongs is illegal. The only reason they do not crack
down on opium poppies grown for ornamental purposes is because they are
not illegal.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/