From Otto's
War Room:
With all the media hype about people using heroin and pharmaceutical narcotics, I knew that members of the media would eventually jump on the sale of poppy pods. I've known a few friends who occasionally order boxes of poppy pods. Their pods just happen to be opium poppies. Those poppies are the easiest to use commercially, even when they are not being used for drugs. But my friends grind them up and make a tea. It relaxes them and they enjoy their use. It seems harmless to me and my friends have used this stuff for years.
Last year a member of Faux (Fox) News found
out, that a person can buy such pods from outlet stores that provide supplies
for floral arrangements and other crafts. The article I saw was called
"Opiates disguised as crafting supplies easily bought online." This
article includes the usual hype that it is possible to buy opium poppy pods as
craft supplies. It is true these supplies can be purchased. But not many people
who buy them right now, use them for making tea.
The whole article revolves around a
professor and his daily use of these pods:
"The beloved
husband and teacher suffered a massive coronary. The death certificate
lists opium addiction as contributing to heart failure."
Normally opium (and opiate) use does not cause heart attacks.
This is true even when people are in withdrawals. The article admits:
"The death
certificate lists opium addiction as contributing to heart failure."
But not the main cause or the only
cause. When a person dies while using any amount of drugs it seems common for
the cause to be listed, officially, as drug use, when if fact drug users die
all the time and that doesn't mean it was because of the drug use. There seems
to be a media trend of blaming drugs for a person's death just because the
person had those drugs in their system at the time of death.
As the article went on, the professors
wife received several boxes of poppy pods that were pre-ordered:
"Sally Sears (the author of this
piece) opened the
first box with renowned drug addiction specialist Dr. Paul Early and he
confirmed the flower husks contain morphine and codeine. To put it
bluntly, heroin."
Opium is not heroin. This is a
blatantly false statement. Heroin is
Diacetylmorphine and is made by exposing morphine hydrochloride to acetic acid.
It is not morphine or codeine. This is an example of hype and exaggeration.
One thing interesting about this
article is that the professor had gotten boxes every day:
"As she struggled
to settle her late husband's affairs, the grieving widow was stunned as boxes
continued to arrive by mail, almost every day."
That stuff is expensive. A half-pound
box may cost between $120 to $200. At the rate she described he must have spent
at least $500 a week. Most people can't afford that. And he was living on a
professors salary.
"Highly addictive
drugs, readily available, is always a bad idea," said Early. "Opiates
cause a general sense of peace and tranquility."
But that sense of peace
and tranquility doesn't last. It soon becomes a hungry monster that's harder
and harder to feed."
But not everyone who uses this becomes
addicted to it. Most people who do it order it maybe once a month or less. Fox
conservatives have shown their hypocrisy with this article. They always
complain that government should stay off our backs and out of our lives. They
write and talk all the time about liberals wanting to control them. But their
attitude is different when it comes to making personal choices about how we
chose to live. Drug use has always been unpopular with conservatives, mostly
because of religious prejudices and because of fears it will decrease worker's
productivity.
But if we are to be a free
society people should be able to live by their own religious standards.
People have a right to use herbal plants as they see fit, as either recreation
or self medication. There are a lot of herbal plants that may hold some
dangers, but most can be used in a relatively safe way.[1] Besides poppy tea, this includes
marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms and coca tea (which
is legal in some countries and can also be ordered online). Not only are these
products relatively harmless in their natural form they are less dangerous than
alcohol. Alcohol can destroy the liver, impairs judgment to a much greater
extent than herbs, can cause withdrawals and it is far more likely
to kill a person
than opiate
withdrawals. Drinking alcohol causes a lot of health problems and yet it is completely legal for
someone to use it. For some alcoholics less dangerous drugs, such as marijuana
or poppy tea, may help wean them off of drink.
I'm glad this article didn't spur any
more hype than it did. As free citizens we need to have the freedom to chose
what we use and how we use it. Employers should judge workers on the work they
do and not what they do outside of work. Our lives are ours when we are not at
work. If people end up addicted to drugs they need to get treatment. That
treatment needs to be made available. But let those who use mild forms of
intoxicants alone.
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