Beware: Reading This Article Could Make You Into a Felon, But Not Reading It Could Get You Arrested
By Steven T. Jones
They are grayish-black flecks, such weightless objects for their potential. Poppy seeds grow into beautiful flowers, taste good in muffins, and produce opium. It is this latter trait that got Tom Dunbar and Jo-D Harrison into so much trouble.
Take the smallest pinch of poppy seeds, the exact same kind that top your bagel, and plant them. In a few days, they will sprout tiny white stems, then slender green leaves, and will keep growing into hardy annuals with vibrant flowers.
A couple of months into the spring growing season, the flowers will fall away, leaving in their place round seedpods filled with thousands of seeds and a milky sap that will ooze out through any slits made in the pod walls. That dried sap is opium, an illegal narcotic even in its most natural form, possession of which can send you to prison.
Opium is a highly addictive drug that can be smoked or eaten, inducing a dreamy high that can last a few hours, or it can be processed into morphine (an alkaloid found in opium that is its main psychoactive component), heroin, codeine, or other drugs.
Yet the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, is widely grown in San Luis Obispo County and across the country as an ornamental flower, and the seeds used to grow the opium poppy are available in any grocery store.
"We bought our poppy seeds at Vons," said Dunbar, who goes on trial next month for
the 203 poppy plants that grew in his Arroyo Grande garden until they were seized by police in May. "They were right between the paprika and the parsley."
Alphabetically, Dunbar may not be right. But he is correct that the poppy seeds available in the spice section are usually Papaver somniferum and can be easily grown into opium poppy plants.
McCormick, the world's largest spice company, even identifies its poppy seeds as Papaver somniferum on its website, noting, "The tiny poppy seed actually comes from the plant that produces opium." Conversely, such seeds grow the opium poppy.
The spice company claims it has developed varieties with "low narcotic potential"a claim disputed as not possible by some poppy expertsyet classic opium poppy varieties can still be legally purchased from garden and seed companies, often advertising them with no warning that they produce opium or are illegal.
That connection between the commonly available poppy seed and the illegal opium plant is one that many of those charged with meting out justice dont understand, such as San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Gerry Shea, who was surprised by most of the above information.
"Thats news to methat it is available commercially," Shea said.
Nonetheless, our country's drug laws put possession of the opium poppyjust the plant, regardless of whether the drug has been extractedin the same felony category of such Schedule II narcotics as cocaine, morphine, and methamphetamine.
Sowing Information
Opium poppies have a rich and storied history nearly 5,000 years long, one that has swung from almost universal acceptance of opium use, in which wars were fought to preserve its trade, to its condemnation on moral grounds at the dawn of the 20th century.
But it is only in the last couple of years that popular knowledge of the opium poppy's narcotic potential has truly blossomed among those Americans inclined to experiment with recreational drugs.
That change began largely with Seattle author Jim Hogshire, who wrote a book called "Opium for the Masses," which in turn formed the basis for an April 1997 cover article in Harper's magazine called "Opium, Made Easy."
"Jim Hogshire and his book punctured a set of myths that served the government well for decades," Michael Pollan wrote in the Harper's article, in which he chronicled his own experience growing opium poppies while examining their legality.
That "set of myths" was the portrayal of opium poppies as an exotic plant grown only in the Far East, from which opium was mysteriously extracted, not a common flower easily grown anywhere in the United States, from which a child could extract opium with his or her fingernail.
"After reading the article in Harper's, I was curious," said Dunbar, whose case is by many accounts one of the first opium poppy prosecutions ever brought in San Luis Obispo County.
While several of the poppies in Dunbar's yard had the slit seedpods that indicate opium had been extracted, Dunbar and Harrison deny using the drug, saying they used the substance in the incense they make and grew the poppies for their beautiful flowers and for the seeds to feed to their many pet birds.
While that intent may not be enough to beat the rap, Hogshire notes that prosecution for possession of opium or opium poppies is not a simple matter. Hogshire himself got raided two years ago by Seattle police, who found poppy seedpods in his house, but the charges were eventually dropped.
"The prosecutors were forced to back down from their opium poppy charges because they could not prove they were Papaver somniferum," Hogshire said in a telephone interview with New Times.
It is difficult to prove a particular seedpod is a banned opium poppy, even tougher to show someone knew what kind of poppy seed they were planting. Testing a sample of the sap from a podthe main opium possession evidence against Dunbar and Harrisoncan only show it contains alkaloids found in opium, alkaloids also naturally produced by other plants.
"If anybody brought that charge against me and pretended that that was evidence, I would challenge that. I would hold them to their burden of proof, which is the states, not mine," Hogshire said. "There is no scientific or legal definition that even comes close to precisely describing what opium is exactly."
Criminal statutes vaguely define an opiate as "any substance having an addiction-forming or addiction-sustaining liability similar to morphine" and opium as being the sap from the seedpod of an opium poppy, which is "the plant of the species Papaver somniferum L., except its seeds."
Yet rather than highlighting the difficulties the government faces in prosecuting poppy growers, Hogshire sees his successful legal battle differently.
"It highlights what an uphill battle a defendant has when the government pretends to codify nature and tries to enforce laws that have no basis in reason," he said. "But the penalties are high and the governments got a lot of money, and a lot of guns, and they have some serious threats they can use."
The San Luis Obispo County Narcotics Task Force may not have known they would even end up with a poppy case when they raided the home of Dunbar and Harrison, mostly because they were high-profile advocates and growers of medical marijuana.
The Raids
Just before 10 o'clock in the morning on May 14, police gathered near Dunbar's Arroyo Grande home and the Los Osos home of John and Violet McLean, armed with guns and search warrants signed by Superior Court Judge Roger Picquet (the affidavits for which were immediately sealed by the judge, concealing from public scrutiny the reason for the simultaneous drug raids).
Dunbar saw the pack of police approaching his Maple Street home, ran into his backyard, and started pulling the heads off his poppy plants. The police also saw him and pursued into the backyard.
"I saw Dunbar kneeling in the garden pulling off the tops of the row of plants that he was kneeling in front of," Detective Brad Melson wrote in the police report. "As I was securing Dunbar, I looked at the row of plants that he was pulling the tops off of. The tops of the plants appeared to be poppy pods and the plant itself appeared to be a poppy plant."
Police counted 203 plants in all, 53 with pods, 24 of which had been lanced. Inside the garage, they found an indoor marijuana growing operation with 72 plants, along with a note indicating they belonged to Dunbar and were for legal medical use. Police also found a few large bags of marijuana and more than $2,000 in cash and seized all manner of pro-marijuana literature and paraphernalia.
Meanwhile, a similar scene was taking place at the McLean residence, as police found an indoor marijuana growing operation and a backyard poppy garden with 446 plants, as well as poppy heads in the kitchen.
"I scored one of the opium bulbs seized from the garden. I tested the fluid and it tested positive for opiates," wrote Detective Nicholas Fontecchio.
The raids themselves came as no surprise to anyone. Both couples were extremely vocal marijuana advocates, telling anyone who would listen of their pot growing operation. A photo of Dunbars plants ran on the front page of the Telegram-Tribune last spring.
"Being as high profile as we are, we figured sooner or later, they were going to raid us," Dunbar said. "We definitely wanted to make a statement against this goddamn drug war."
Both Dunbar and the McLeans have doctor's prescriptions for using marijuana, making for an interesting showdown with the authorities. The McLean case was settled with a plea bargain that got all of the felonies, including the poppy charge, dropped.
John McLean pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge and got a $200 fine and two years probation, with conditions modified to allow him to continue smoking and possessing marijuana. The McLeans have since moved to Fresno.
Asked why the poppy charge was dropped, Dennis Schloss, the deputy district attorney prosecuting Dunbar and Harrison, said, "I was not satisfied that we had adequate proof of knowing possession of opium in that case."
His statement is surprising considering the McLeans had twice as many poppy plants as Dunbar, and police discovered opium poppy pods in the kitchen being processed in a way consistent with making opium tea, while there was no evidence in the police report indicating Dunbar was using opium as a drug.
Dunbar says he doesn't want a plea bargain, but wants to put the issue of growing poppies and marijuana on trial. As a convicted felon20 years ago, he was sent to prison for armed robberyDunbar could be facing a long prison term for his stand.
"Im just a sacrificial lamb in all this," Dunbar said. "Im not the epitome of the all-American boy to stand up for our rights, but Im doing it. They cant threaten me with prison because Ive been there. Im not scared of this."
While more cautious than Dunbar about what she would say about her alleged crimes, Harrison did outline her views on drugs derived from plants.
"I don't think any human being has the right to say what natural items on our planet are good or bad," she said. "Not if it grows out of the earth."
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