Poppy Seed Tea Can Kill You | Hacker News Reader

Poppy Seed Tea Can Kill You

poppyseedtea.com

3.5 pounds of poppy seeds to concoct one dose of tea. I can only surmise that this was being taken, knowingly, as a recreational drug, no?

I think my curiosity with this website is that it speaks with two conflicting tones. One is the desire to educate, protect others, and take full responsibility for their son's death. But the other is almost a, "if you're reading this, we assume you already read between the lines on what people are doing with poppy seeds."

Maybe the site needs a section to educate people of how exactly poppy seeds can be abused?

I don't understand your comment. I think the site is trying hard to strike a nonjudgmental tone. Yes, poppy seed tea is a way of taking opiates. The point being made is that the dose is difficult to control.

Hmm. I didn't really think of it that way. I was seeing a site that wanted to warn people of a danger but not touch on the fact about how people can abuse poppy seeds.

I guess my confusion is that I was so unaware of this that I read half the page before I realised that this wasn't some accidental exposure to high concentrations of poppy seed extract.

A simple search will tell you how it is abused. I don’t think they want to be the ones spreading that information.

If you happen to search Google for "poppy seed tea" out of curiosity like I was, this site pops up. I think it serves the intended purpose.

> But the other is almost a, "if you're reading this, we assume you already read between the lines on what people are doing with poppy seeds."

Why do you have a problem with that stance? The very second sentence mentions that opiates can be found on seeds. Plenty of harm reduction and education groups take the stance of being clear about consequences and dangers without going into detail about exactly how to brew a batch.

To be clear this was the result of mixing a lot of poppy seed tea with Xanax. While it does look like in this sad case it may have been intentional abuse of poppy seeds (to get high), mixing drugs without talking to a doctor can easily cause severe problems.

But it isn’t just poppy seeds.

Some non-abusable substences mixed with other drugs can have severe complications.

If you are taking benzodiazepines then consuming grapefruit is dangerous.

If you’re on MAOIs then turkey, cheese, etc are very very dangerous (anything with tryptophan, but those are just super common causes of problems)

From the article, "his blood free-morphine content alone (219 ng/ml) was already lethal, even without the benzos"

Also incompatible with MAOIs: liver, fava beans, a nice chianti.

3.5 lbs of poppy seed makes how much tea: a cup, a liter or a gallon? Seems like a heckova a lot of seeds for a batch of tea.

If this were in the US, shouldn't this be something the USPHS, USDA or FDA should regulate? Selling bulk poppy seeds containing enormous amounts of would-be heroin seems tantamount to drug trafficking.

Regulating poppy seeds really isn't the answer to systemic drug abuse. It hasn't worked well for any of the countries that try it. The right response is patently decriminalization and management if you want to lessen the impact of drug use on your society. You have all of Europe, which has many different policies and good statistics on their effects, to use as investigative material.

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