Opium Poppies Being Grown in Marijuana Fields, Official Says

California marijuana growers appear to be experimenting with the cultivation of opium-producing poppy plants, a state drug enforcement official says.

William Ruzzamenti, deputy commander of the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, said officers have discovered about 400 opium poppies scattered among 1,200 or so marijuana plants on an 80-acre site in Humboldt County.

“There were seven separate little gardens of the opium poppies . . . a real sophisticated operation,” he said in a recent interview. “We think this is probably a test situation because the garden was so sophisticated.”

Officers also found a solar-powered generator for irrigation pumps and other uses and a shelter for the people who tended the marijuana and poppy plants on a privately owned wooded site near Ettersburg, he said.

“This was the first find of a really significant size, which we hope is not shades of things to come,” Ruzzamenti said. “Historically, it has always been believed that you could not grow opium in the United States because of the growing conditions here. . . .”

He said some big-time marijuana growers apparently are experimenting to determine whether poppy plants can be profitably cultivated in California. Many of the poppy bulbs at the site had been scored with a knife to milk the black, tarry sap that can either be smoked raw or converted into morphine or heroin, he said.

Samples were sent to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington to determine the potency of the plants and if they came from Mexico, Asia or Turkey--the main poppy growing areas, Ruzzamenti said.