Hacker News Reader

Comment by tssva | Hacker News Reader

This is not an accurate story. Monticello had for a while been concerned about the legality of growing the plant and selling the seeds. They first contacted the Department of Agriculture and the Virginia Attorney General regarding this question. They didn't receive clear guidance, so they then reached out to the DEA regarding the legality. The DEA told them it was illegal but also released a public statement that no enforcement action would take place if they grew them solely for decorative purposes on the estate. Monticello made the decision to go ahead and remove the plants anyways on their own.

View on HN

Sharing a source linked below that confirms this comment and seems to disprove the article posted - https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/ROA-Times/issues/1991/rt9...

You mean some raving diatribe on the Internet is actually total bullshit? Shocking!

In all seriousness, thanks very much for your post, it's the kind of informative content that I really appreciate about HN.

At the same time, this blog post gets to everything I hate about the Internet and online discourse these days: nobody even attempts to argue in good faith anymore. US drug policy over the past century is rife with plenty enough problems that you don't need to blatantly make shit up to get your point across, as this author did.

I was living in Charlottesville at the time and I remember this. Charlottesville had just made national news because of a huge drug bust at UVa (Operation Equinox). Monticello was covering its bases.

Ah, Alternet. I didn't realize they still existed. When I was a news junkie it was one of my sources of information - until I started digging deep and learned how inaccurate it often was.

Interestingly, the wikipedia article for papaver somniferum includes the op version of the story, linking to op as a source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papaver_somniferum#History

Thank you.

Also, the headline is self-contradictory. How could it be scrubbed from public memory and then there's an article. Maybe they tried? But apparently that's not really true either.

The alternative facts news-sphere ALWAYS plays the "HERES WHAT THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW but for some reason a random dude on the internet totally uncovered this top secret situation but he doesn't even work for the air national guard or use discord"

as a former (army) nasty girl I sincerely appreciate your mildly pejorative use of the air national guard. (;

I meant it as a reference to the kid leaking intelligence secrets for discord clout

oh, right. well I still appreciate it (;

The DEA is not a good source of legal advice. It is legal to grow Papaver somniferum in the United States for garden and seed production purposes.

Not only is the DEA not a source of legal advice in any capacity, they can lie to you if directed to.

Monticello stopped growing poppies because they asked their legal counsel and they said "yeah that's a fast track to jail"

Monticello contacted, I'm sure through their legal counsel, the Department of Agriculture which indicated growing the poppies in question was legal and the Attorney General of Virginia's office who indicated that the law was contridictary and unclear. This when they then contacted the DEA for an opinion.

if you're talking about the USDA, it's irrelevant. You might as well ask a cow it's opinion on whether prime rib or sirloin is better. USDA does not prosecute drug crimes. The USDA could also just as easily lie to you if they wanted to.

The USDA does have primary federal law enforcement power for National Forests including drug crimes, but that is irrelevant to this discussion.

The FDA not the DEA is the primary regulator and enforcement agency for poppy seeds intended for human consumption.

The USDA is the primary regulator of seeds intended for planting. Since the seeds being sold at Monticello were sold with the intended for use in the planting of poppies, when surveying for opinions it seems an appropriate agency to get one from.

Do you have evidence/sources for that? I did some searching and couldn't find any primary sources that said growing Papaver somniferum in the United States is legal. On the contrary, nearly every primary source I found said that it is illegal.

The Wikipedia article on the topic says this:

> Though "opium poppy and poppy straw" are listed in Schedule II of the United States' Controlled Substances Act, P. somniferum can be grown legally in the United States as a seed crop or ornamental flower.

But the source reference to that sentence points to this article, https://web.archive.org/web/20210421041214/http://agsyst.wsu... , which states:

> It is legal to grow Papaver somniferum in the United States for garden and seed production purposes; it is illegal to manufacture opium from the poppies.

However, that article doesn't seem to back that up with any source material. On the contrary, it directly contradicts one of its own listed sources, https://web.archive.org/web/20210421145024/http://www.hort.p... , which states "As the peony flowered poppy, the opium poppy is widely grown as an ornamental, even here in the US, where it is illegal to grow."

That is, as best as I could find, growing Papaver somniferum is still technically illegal in the US, but basically all enforcement agencies have said they're OK with ornamental use. Would love to see any contradictory evidence if someone has it.

Weed grower for about ten years here. If you've paid any attention at all to the legal industry, you'll see that there's an endless supply of new "genetics" coming out (99% hype bullshit) and some famous names like "Kush," "Diesel," etc.

These are called cultivars, the same species but much like dog breeds, you can select for attributes like potency, flavor, etc.

I've never seriously tried to grow opium, but I have had poppies in the garden and I've attempted to slice and get a bit of latex from them, and basically the seeds they sell for gardens are a weak cultivar that is not suitable for opium production. If you look at the Wikipedia page it's got a picture of what appears to be an Afghan farmer collecting latex, and you can tell from the photo that this is a heavy latex-producing breed, very different from what we can grow legitimately here.

I'm sure seeds for that cultivar can be acquired fairly easily, but I wouldn't know how.

Based on a link a commenter posted above, part of it is cultivar but a big part of it is also the environment:

> Virginia's climate will not allow opium poppies to mature to a point at which opium could be extracted from their bulbs, Charlottesville Federal Drug Task Force Agent Richard Hudson said. The plants could reach that point in a greenhouse, he said.

It's definitely not the best climate, but I believe any competent grower with knowledge of the specific craft of growing for extraction could do it. I might know someone who might have once attempted to look into getting known-stoned seeds to give it a go, but never found any sort of confirmation that these were the magic beans he was looking for so never made the attempt.

The flowers come up just about everywhere without much effort - same is true of cannabis and tomatoes, but poppies will naturally come back wherever they establish themselves. Yes, the best herb grows wild in places like Jamaica with long summers, but you can grow quite a respectable crop outdoors where I live, about 200km north of North Dakota, especially if you've got a greenhouse, but even without, there are cultivars which are very amenable to short seasons.

Not totally sure poppies completely transfer, knowledge-wise, like weed and tomatoes - if you can grow tomatoes, you can grow weed, by the way. But I'm pretty sure, and the article is seriously hinting, that that is at least somewhat the case, and it's definitely a crop that any competent farmer can just switch to, if their local environment is hospitable to it. I don't doubt that in Jefferson's day it was a more common home remedy than 20th century history books recorded.

This link from the North Carolina State University agricultural extension indicates it is illegal at least in North Carolina.

https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/papaver-somniferum/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com