T&M Debacle Caused by Nosey Customs Agent  
Posted by ajones -- July 11, 2001
Reprinted from the Detroit Free Press article "Poppy planters breaking the law" by Marty Hair, Free Press Garden Writer
In the new Thompson & Morgan catalog, among this season's best and brightest of plants, there's a poppy called Pink Dawn.
But don't bother trying to order it, or seeds of any other Papaver somniferum, from the company.
Thompson & Morgan has stopped selling seeds of opium poppies to its U.S. customers.
Its exclusion is the latest skirmish in the opium poppy war, in which U.S. gardeners who grow these cottage garden favorites are committing a federal crime.
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, it is illegal to grow or possess any part of opium poppy plants except the seeds, which are available through other mail-order catalogs and in grocery stores.
Gardeners have long admired this annual for its beautiful flowers and ability to self-sow, so new poppy plants grow each year.
Federal agents are more concerned about the seedhead or capsule of the opium poppy, which has the milky sap that is the source of heroin.
The seedheads of other varieties of poppies can't be used to make drugs, so it's OK to grow those.
The DEA has asked seed companies to voluntarily stop selling opium poppies for garden or culinary use "before this situation adds to the drug abuse epidemic," according to a 1995 letter.
A spokeswoman says while the DEA does not specifically target poppy plants in home gardens, "If we get a tip or if we are making a case and poppy plants are also found, we pursue" the matter.
But many gardeners who grow opium poppies may not even know they are breaking the law.
"People share the seeds, and none of them was aware that they're opium poppies," says one Oakland County gardener who, like others interviewed who grow opium poppies, asked to remain anonymous in this article.
In response to the DEA, Shepherd's Garden Seeds now limits sales to three seed packets of opium poppies per customer.
The owner of Cook's Garden, another popular mail-order firm, says he considers the whole thing to be ridiculous. In a phone interview, Shepherd Ogden said anyone growing opium poppies for drugs would have to plant huge tracts of land, not order a couple of seed packets.
It would be a better use of DEA resources to go after those major growers rather "than hassling home gardeners who are planting a few here and there," he says.
Still, the prospect of getting penalized for growing the illegal plant convinced Connecticut author Michael Pollan to stop growing opium poppies. He wrote about how he'd grown some in his own garden in Harper's magazine.
"I love them. I think they're great plants to grow as an annual, not as a drug. I really wish I could grow them," Pollan said recently. When his article was published in 1997, "Nothing happened to me," he says. "But I became very nervous about it."
Thompson & Morgan, a British seed and plant merchant established in 1855, continues to sell opium poppy seeds in England. But it changed its policy here after a U.S. Customs agent questioned its incoming shipment last summer and consulted the DEA.
The company withdrew the seeds in the United States because "if our records were seized by the DEA, our customers could be jeopardized," said Susan Jellinek, a horticulturist at the company's U.S. headquarters in New Jersey. "It's just not the kind of thing you want to risk." Angry customers have observed if they wanted to get the seeds, all they'd have to do is go to a grocery store spice aisle. Opium poppy seeds, which are edible, are also widely used on breads.
A number of mail-order catalogs that offer opium poppy seeds say nothing about the federal ban on growing the plant. Most gardening books don't mention it either. Opium poppies and the controversies around them, however, get extensive treatment on a Web site called www.poppies.org.
Opium poppies have been grown at least since 2000 B.C., according to Christopher Grey-Wilson, author of "Poppies: A Guide to the Poppy Family in the Wild and in Cultivation" (Timber Press, $37.95).
Opium was widely used as a narcotic to ease pain and induce sleep. Its addictive effect was not recognized in the West until after 1900, according to Grey-Wilson.
One suburban Detroiter whose garden includes opium poppies says she inherited the plants, probably sown decades ago by a previous owner.
When the opium poppies bloom, they are "gorgeous," she reports.
"People stop and say, 'Wow!' And I chuckle, because I know what they are."
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