Opium poppy

On a mid-spring morning in 2012, a Nova Scotia father knocked on his teenage son’s bedroom door. Cole Marchand had been experiencing gastrointestinal upset for a day or two, and father Darrell was checking to see whether the mild over-the-counter remedy he’d gotten for Cole had made any difference.

He found Cole dead.

The coroner returned a verdict of morphine poisoning. Cole had accidentally overdosed on morphine after drinking poppy seed tea,1 which he’d brewed from a poppy seed pod he’d bought online. The Marchand family tragedy shone a spotlight on the increasing availability of unprocessed poppy seed products in the North American market.

Fifteen years later, on the other side of the country, I am hailed by family members as the Poppy Queen. What began as a hobby—snapping bulbous, dried poppy seed heads from stalks growing along the roadside (handing them to my children in the wagon to shake at each other like maracas) and then sprinkling them over bare soil at home—became an obsession. Today, our haphazard garden is overrun by poppies. They crowd out everything else: I’m not one of those gardeners who “thins”. As I write this, in fact, I am awaiting the delivery of 5,500 seeds of Papaver somniferum (the poppy that brings sleep) from the BC Eco Seed Co-op, sourced from a farm a few kilometres away.

No one is allowed to snap off the poppy seed pods in our garden until I deem them to be ready. Years ago, I experienced anguish when I woke early one morning anticipating a plentiful harvest, only to find that a squirrel had surgically removed every pod from its stalk hours earlier, leaving a skeletal forest of headless spires.

My children have long outgrown the wagon, but they’ve inherited some of my obsessive traits; they’re still happy to perch with me on wooden stools at the island in the middle of our red-tiled kitchen, tapping hundreds of seed pods into the large mixing bowl I’ve set aside for the purpose. As an activity, it combines some of my favourite things: gardening, mothering, and chitchat.

On Fridays, I bake challah, the braided egg bread that graces the Sabbath dinner table in Jewish homes. It was my children’s epiphany—that the poppy seeds they tapped into the bowl each summer were the same poppy seeds we shook from a store-bought package onto the rising loaves each week—that led us to try, one Friday, sprinkling our own poppy seeds onto the challah before it went into the oven.

The Poppy Queen spent the next 30 minutes in distress at the thought of all those potential spring-time blooms dying at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

We tried one more culinary experiment before the Queen finally waved her sceptre and forbade the use of her garden-grown poppy seeds in the Shoichet kitchen. We attempted hamantaschen—the triangular cookies baked at Purim, which falls in spring. Our hamantashen, so perfectly triangular and plump when they went into the oven, came out of the oven open and dishevelled, the poppy seed filling having flooded the sheet pan and burned, forming a thin, inedible crust. A hundred million poppies, never to bloom.

We have never, in the Shoichet kitchen, tried poppy seed tea.

Poppy seeds themselves don’t contain any deadly opioid alkaloids. Opium is derived from the latex of the poppy—the “tears” of the poppy seed pod, which can be observed by scoring an immature (unopened) seed head and letting the viscous, yellowish liquid ooze out along the seam of the score. As the seed head matures, the naturally occurring alkaloids of the opium poppy—including a potent combination of morphine, codeine, and thebaine—concentrate in the latex.2 Dried tears, ground fine and often pressed into bricks for easy transport, are raw opium.

Most of us gardeners aren’t in it for the opium—at least, not commercially—so we don’t harvest the tears. Instead, we let the pods mature over a period of several weeks: the upper flutes of the poppy seed head open, and air begins to circulate.

But as the pod dries, the alkaloids in the latex adhere to the poppy seeds.

Typically, poppy seeds are processed to remove contaminants before they enter the commercial food chain. The average grocery shopper can be certain the poppy seeds she buys at her local Sobey’s or Thrifty’s or Fairway will be relatively free of morphine (though the standard recommendation is not to eat a large lemon poppy seed muffin immediately before having to pass a mandatory drug test).

But processing methods around the world differ: opium poppy seeds that aren’t thoroughly “washed” can retain high amounts of opiates. This means that the poppy seed buyer who sources her poppy seeds on the open global market (now so accessible from the comfort of her kitchen, by phone or with the click of a mouse) can never be completely sure of the opioid content of her poppy seeds—whether she plans to send a poppy seed cake to the school bake sale or dispose of her mother-in-law.

If the whole point of the social event is to eat cake or drink tea and not die, you are far better off with poppy seeds from your local grocer. They’re typically low enough in opioid content that your guests will leave your parlour upright, in full possession of their faculties, perhaps with the recipe for your poppy seed cake.

On the other hand, if your plan requires a significant concentration of morphine, the overseas poppy seed market is enticing, but risky. If you order your poppy seed pods from the Far East, it becomes very difficult to argue that any ensuing opioid event was wholly unplanned; after all, there are perfectly serviceable, unpoisonous poppy seeds available in any market down the street.

It’s best for the backyard poisoner to grow her own poppy seeds—and then, should it become necessary, claim ignorance as to the opioid content of home-grown specimens. The primary downside to the opium poppy as a poisoning agent is its unpredictability. The size, varietal, time of harvest, genetics and processing of opium poppy plants will lead to variability in results. The alkaloid content of individual plants differs; the concentration of opioids in a given teaspoon’s-worth of seeds will also differ.

But generally, if the seeds of the standard garden-variety opium poppy are left to mature within the seed pod and then brewed or baked, with significant amounts of dried latex, into whatever dish or beverage the savvy backyard poisoner intends to serve her victim (tea? muffins? hamantaschen?), the chance of a murderous event is good. At the very least, she will reduce the likelihood of that long, awkward silence around the tea table after everyone has finished their commercially sourced poppy seed cake and drunk their commercially sourced poppy seed tea and ... nothing happens.

Gardener’s notes:

Papaver somniferum is the mid-spring queen of the garden. Elegant, 3-foot spires are topped with large tulip-like blooms in a range of colours—blue, purple, red, pink, white, and everything in between. The pollen tempts a wide range of pollinating insects. The blooms aren’t long-lasting, but once the petals fall, the seed pods are beautiful in their own right. Wait until the pods are open and dry before harvesting (you should be able to hear the seeds when you shake the heads). Watch for rodents, who are also attracted to the mature seed pods.

Mature poppy seed pods

First responder’s notes:

Opioid overdose looks the same whether it’s an overdose of heroin or an overdose of poppy seed tea. The individual will likely be extremely drowsy, possibly limp and unresponsive. Skin is pale and clammy, lips and fingernails are grey or blue, pupils are pinpoint. Heartbeat will be slow or undetectable, breathing shallow or nonexistent. Treat with naloxone, by injection or nasal spray if available, more than once if the positive effects of the treatment wear off before medical aid arrives.3

Writer’s notes:

As noted, the problem with the opium poppy is its unpredictability. If death by opioid overdose is the preferred method, consider whether it’s easier to simply get one’s hands on a lethal dose of morphine.

Pro:

So clean. In a successful case of opium poppy poisoning with murderous intent, the victim falls asleep and doesn’t wake up. The thorniest problem is ensuring the victim falls asleep at home rather than in the backyard poisoner’s parlour—a strong case for not inviting the victim to tea but instead taking tea to the victim. Bonus: a non-fatal poisoning can be passed off as an unfortunate accident.

Contra:

In the past 5 years in British Columbia, opioid overdose has become so commonplace that in larger urban centres naloxone training is provided to students in high school and it’s standard fare in first aid courses. Most first responders arrive with naloxone in hand; as there are no lasting ill effects even if the remedy is administered in error, it will likely be the first responder’s first response if an individual is exhibiting telltale symptoms of overdose. Thus, even if the tea is sufficiently poisonous, an overdose will be fatal only if no one responds quickly.

Papaver somniferum in full glory

Pathologist’s notes:

As noted, one opioid overdose looks very like another. Determining the source of the alkaloid may be the greatest challenge.

Murderer’s best-case scenario:

A warm late-summer afternoon, iced tea brewed strong the previous day (in a teapot that’s already halfway to the landfill because garbage collection was this morning), and a victim who doesn’t ever let a pitcher of homemade iced tea go to waste.

Final score (taking into account toxicity, certainty, detectability, and ease of use, including preparation and clean-up): 6/10

1 “N.S. family warns of poppy seed tea dangers,” CBC News, 4 June 2012.

2 Sun Yi Li et al., “Determination of morphine, codeine, and thebaine concentrations from poppy seed tea using magnetic carbon nanotubes facilitated dispersive micro-solid phase extraction and GC-MS analysis”, Forensic Science International, vol 329, December 2021.

3 Government of Canada, “Frequently Asked Questions: Access to naloxone in Canada”, modified August 21, 2024.