are those opium poppies?

A friend was visiting the other day and was very excited to see poppies growing in my garden. She exclaimed that they were opium poppies and were illegal to grow in Canada. I told her that almost every Doukhobor homestead around here has these poppies and I had dug them up many years ago at an abandoned farm. They grow like a weed here. Poppies like mountain living with cool nights and warm days...perfect!  I was able to research and discover that these are indeed opium poppies. I collect the seeds for poppyseed cake just like my Russian neighbours. Now I know that if I was to eat that poppyseed cake and take a drug test, I would be found with opiate alkaloids in my system and would fail miserably.  In some parts of the world where retirement is not an option and people work right up to their dying day, the opium from these poppies gives them euphoric pain relief and the ability to keep working. They call the opium, "God's own medicine."  It was used by the ancient Sumerians 6000 years ago. In ancient Greece, Homer writes about it. In the 19th century  a quarter of all men in China were addicted to opium. The Government realized how damaging this was and declared it illegal and made the population go cold turkey. In British India the fields were a huge source of wealth and most of the product was heading to the large market in China.  The Brits started the opium wars with the Chinese and after defeating them forced China to allow importation. Opium has always been a huge cash crop.  Scientists concerned with opium use took it to their laboratories and created heroin, so named for it's heroic properties. That one kind of backfired on them. Almost all painkillers are derived from the opium poppy. We love painkillers. Artists through the ages have indulged themselves with it's euphoria. Lewis Carroll wrote Alice In Wonderland. Samuel Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan. We all remember Dorothy waking up in a poppy field before she finds the Emerald City. Courtnay Love gives it her thumbs up for best recreational drug to do in a very expensive hotel. That's H, of course. It definately gives me another outlook on my prolific poppy population. Think I'll just stick to poppy seed cake though. Yet it's good to know that if the apocalypse comes, I have the pain killer thing covered.