How the DEA scrubbed Thomas jefferson's poppy garden from public memory
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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.
Monticello stopped growing poppies because they asked their legal counsel and they said "yeah that's a fast track to jail"
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
It wasn't just orange poppies. They were a bunch of colors. Looked great.
My mother grew them in our back yard. My brother and I used to chase each other with dried seed pods. They rattled, and, when you smacked someone, the seeds would explode, getting into everything.
"Opium For The Masses" by Jim Hogshire, 1994 [0]
[0] https://ia800802.us.archive.org/9/items/armchaircommando/Opi...
Remember it’s not about what a piece of paper says the rules are - it’s what you can get away with in power.
I'm aware that the Supreme Court sometimes completely changes its mind in a matter of decades, so it's possible a legislative prohibition would have been struck down 20 years before Wickard v. Filburn, but it's also possible the court would have come to the same unanimous decision. I don't know anything about legal history so if there's some obvious reason the 1918 court would have ruled differently then I apologize.
That is indeed the theory but it’s completely fictional.
It wasn’t “ridiculous.” It was one of the first things women did with the vote. It probably would’ve worked if it hadn’t been for Irish and Italian immigrants.
In the south there were so many bootleggers that they used to race each other around tracks to see who had the fastest car. This would eventually become Nascar.
I think it's more accurate to say that there was overwhelming support for Volstead from people in power who were swayed by the narrative that alcohol was draining families of resources and dis-inhibiting otherwise good men from hitting their wives and children. But there were also a lot of people who didn't let alcohol ruin their marriages and family relationships, and those people would eventually get the act repealed.
We repealed prohibition because it proved unenforceable. And Irish and Italian immigrants had a tremendous amount to do with that, both because of their participation in organized crime and because of their cultural acceptance of alcohol. (To this day, the divide between people who supported temperance and those who got it repealed lives on in who serves grape juice at communion and who serves wine. Even a century of integration later, there’s a marked difference between evangelical Protestants and Catholics in terms of regular alcohol use.)
After all, it’s not like banning alcohol is impossible. Alcohol use is extremely restricted in many countries around the world.
So the relevant cultural difference is between these American Protestants, who had been diverging from Europe for 100+ years, and immigrants from continental Europe, who hadn’t experienced that cultural change.
"To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;"
You cannot deny that "among the several states" can be interpreted to mean congress can regulate commerce in the states.
If I regulate commerce specifically in the state of Virginia, which is a member of the set of states, IMO I am regulating commerce among the states. The rest of that section of the constitution is all about how the Government's laws should be equal across all states, ie there is no favoritism, so that also leads me to believe this could be about keeping the government fair, rather than limited.
Keep in mind a huge point of the Constitution superseding the articles of confederation was that interstate activities were a pain in the ass and trade treaties were a dumpster fire. Giving congress final say over trade in the Union is absolutely compatible with that. It was not a document about keeping the Feds out of the business of the states. It was entirely about giving the federal government MORE power over the affairs of the states because the previous federal government was basically useless and at the whims of powerful state governors who absolutely did not want to stop being the kings of their little fiefdoms.
>Employees even gathered the store's souvenir T-shirts with silkscreened photos of Monticello poppies on the chest -- and burned them.
> Jefferson had planted opium poppies in his medicinal garden, and opium poppies are now deemed illegal
Growing with the intent to produce opium is illegal. By continuing his tradition in the museum, it was deemed a continuation of production for drugs and so probably came under scrutiny. I'm sure they could regrow a garden for decorative purposes if they actually did that and were clear about it.
https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/ROA-Times/issues/1991/rt9...
1- `A DEA man noticed the store was selling packets of "Thomas Jefferson's Monticello Poppies."`
2- `Nobody told them to do this, but, under the circumstances, no one dared risk the threat`
> The seeds had to go, too. While poppy seeds might be legal, it is never legal to plant them. Not for any reason.