This Is Your Mind on Plants

Pollan introduces his passage on opium as an article previously published in Harper’s Magazine in 1997, when the war on drugs was particularly fervent. However, the essay here includes several pages that were removed from the original publication out of concern for the legality of Pollan’s experience and to protect him and his family from any serious drug charges. Interested in the trend of growing opium poppies as detailed in the book Opium for the Masses by Jim Hogshire, Pollan began to experiment with growing them himself, which he recalls turned into a nightmarish situation. The US government had a strict ban on the growth of these poppies, which are commonly found in gardens, because they can easily be used to create a “homegrown narcotic” (16). These prohibitive laws were part and parcel of the Clinton government’s strict approach to the war on drugs, which saw millions of Americans arrested as more stringent laws were introduced. Pollan traces the war on drugs back to the Nixon administration, arguing that his administration demonized drugs to criminalize anti-war hippies and Black Americans. He notes that decades of anti-drug policing have not prevented drug use and overdoses but have instead resulted in the imprisonment of “hundreds of thousands of nonviolent criminals,” among whom Black Americans are overrepresented (17). Indeed, many fatal overdoses are the result of legally-obtained drugs, such as prescription opioids. Pollan explains that while it was illegal for him to grow certain poppies in the late 90s, the corporation Purdue Pharma created OxyContin, an opioid they aggressively marketed to the medical community as a solution for chronic pain. Patients’ addictions to OxyContin led to 230,000 overdose deaths, and many became addicted to illegal drugs, such as heroin, when they no longer had access to the prescription drugs. Pollan argues that these tragedies have caused people to develop a negative association with opioids, which he says can serve a useful purpose if people use them wisely. He concludes his prologue by lamenting that our thousands-year use and knowledge of the poppies themselves may become completely extinct as people favor synthetic opioids. 

Pollan explains that he is growing many poppies in his garden, which is illegal not because of the type of opium-producing poppy they are but because he knew that they had the potential to produce opium. The author reveals that the anti-drug laws surrounding these poppies only prohibited their growth if the gardener was aware of their opioid potential. Pollan recalls how he easily ordered poppy seeds from a gardening catalog after reading contradictory information about their legality. In doing so, he considered using them to make a home brew of opium, a thought which he considered natural of a gardener since they often use their plants as food, medicine, and more. Pollan extends this thought to address how complex the legality of growing poppies has become in the US, making it easy to break laws without intending to. He mentions how this happened to Jim Hogshire, who shared his knowledge on opium poppies in a book and promptly “had his life pretty well wrecked” (24).

Pollan introduces Hogshire as a libertarian author of Pills-a-go-go, a zine collecting amusing articles criticizing national drug regulators and describing his own experiences using drugs. Pollan admits to dabbling in some drugs, such as cannabis, and even growing them when it was not so illegal to do so, but he claims his interest in Hogshire’s work about opium poppies is “strictly literary” (26). He explains that the Clinton administration has intensified the war on drugs through its $15 billion investment in its enforcement and Supreme Court rulings, which even allow for police surveillance flyovers of private property. It is in this strictly anti-drug climate that Jim Hogshire published his 1994 Opium for the Masses, which explains how to safely and inexpensively brew a mildly narcotic opium tea at home by using common opium poppies. In addition to debunking myths about the types of poppies needed and the process of extracting the opium, Hogshire also spoke highly of the opium tea’s effects, claiming that it could ease pains and produce feelings of euphoria as well as vivid dreams. Hogshire informed his readers that while opium may be illegal, the plant itself could not be and that brewing homemade opium products was a legal gray area. Intrigued, Pollan delves into further research about poppies, finding that most garden writers glossed over their potential and historical use as a source of opium and focused on their aesthetics. Pollan discovers that many cultures made use of the poppy’s opium to treat dysentery, colic, insomnia, anxiety, tuberculosis, and more. The author peruses the many varieties of poppies available to order from garden catalogs, most interested in those that may contain higher levels of opium. He reaches out to Jim Hogshire for advice but finds that he and his wife have been arrested by a SWAT team and accused of running a drug manufacturing operation though all the SWAT team found were a bottle of legal prescription medication, some guns, and a few bunches of cellophane-wrapped dried poppies that likely came from a florist. Pollan is shocked and worried about his contact with Hogshire and the police’s perception of it. While Pollan is spooked by the news about Hogshire, he decides to go ahead with planting his poppy seeds. Around this time, he reads an article in the tabloid the New York Post advising gardeners not to plant poppies since the plants, live or dead, are considered a drug. Pollan then calls his local police station to inquire about the poppies’ legality and is told that poppies have been “declared a flower” by the government and are legal unless the grower has an “intent to sell or profit” and manufactures them (37).

Pollan is in frequent contact with Hogshire, whose arrest and eviction from his apartment made him disgruntled and paranoid. Pollan explains the details of Hogshire’s arrest, which was over bunches of store-bought poppies, and how he and his wife were held for three days before being charged with possession of an illegal substance and the intent to manufacture and distribute it. With no evidence to show that Hogshire was planting, harvesting, or manufacturing opium poppies, the judge was unconvinced and dismissed the charges. The police then charged Hogshire with “simple possession” and when he failed to come to court, they put out a warrant for his arrest (42). Increasingly worried, Pollan asks Hogshire’s lawyer about the legality of growing poppies, and the lawyer cites the 1970 Federal Controlled Substances Act, which confirms that “opium poppy and poppy straw” are in fact controlled substances (43). Pollan points out that the law is quite contradictory, as poppy seeds, such as those put on bagels, are legal while the plants they produce are illegal. Additionally, to be charged with a crime the grower would have to be growing poppies “knowingly or intentionally” (44). Pollan laments that it is obvious he planted his poppies knowing their potential as a source of opium and is now more worried about the legality of his poppies even though there has never been a successful prosecution of a poppy grower in the US. Meanwhile, his poppies are just blooming, and Pollan appreciates their striking colors and beauty, calling them a “lavish gift of nature” (47). Knowing that he has already technically committed a crime, Pollan decides to take another step and splits open a poppy seed head, trying the milky substance it produces, which he says is so bitter he cannot even describe it.

Pollan meets Hogshire, who is still avoiding arrest, in person in Manhattan. He learns more about Hogshire’s lengthy experimentation with creating usable opium from poppies and how he learned to make opium tea from seed heads. Pollan ponders how quickly our society has lost knowledge about opium poppies, pointing out that the Confederacy urged southern farmers to grow opium poppies for medical use during the civil war, and the US government recommended them as a cash crop as recently as 1915. When shopping for poppies with Hogshire in New York, Pollan hears from some florists that they are no longer allowed to stock the plant, but they successfully buy some poppies elsewhere. Pollan investigates more and finds that the DEA is visiting many florists and discouraging them from selling poppies. In a conversation with one, Pollan learns that he too could be the target of a drug raid since even writing about his experience growing poppies could be interpreted as a promotion of ingesting opium. With drug laws that are so strict, confusing, and irregularly enforced, Pollan calls them a “powerful weapon in the hands of an Agent Anonymous” (57).

Pollan soon learns that the DEA had sent letters to various large seed companies requesting that they stop selling certain varieties of poppy seeds and had even arrested some poppy growers. He secures an interview with DEA agent Larry Snyder, who confirms that the agency is attempting a “quiet crackdown” by discouraging the sale and purchase of poppy seeds which, while legal, would be illegal to grow, harvest, and manufacture (64). Pollan posits that government agents continue to propagate myths about how difficult it is to manufacture opium from poppies, hoping to discourage people from trying. Pollan decides to brew his own poppy tea since he is already on the wrong side of the law.

The author interjects his own commentary into his article to explain why the following pages were omitted from the original article before it was published in a 1997 edition of Harper’s Magazine. He recalls how he requested that lawyers review his work before publishing and that meeting with them scared him quite a lot. The lawyers informed him that he was in “serious legal jeopardy” since law enforcement did not even require physical evidence of opium manufacturing to charge him with this crime and that his article could be interpreted as a confession (69). Pollan was frightened to learn that, if convicted, he could be punished with “up to twenty years in prison and a $1 million fine” (69). He also found it disturbing that even if he was not convicted of a crime, the government could seize his land and home since his “house and garden can be ‘convicted’ of the crime of manufacturing opium regardless of whether I am ever charged, let alone convicted, of that offense” (69). In considering the lawyers’ warnings Pollan could clearly see the two opposing narratives at play: his perception that brewing a mild homemade remedy using a seed head from his own garden was a harmless hobby and how the US government would consider the same act “manufacturing narcotics” (70). Pollan felt it would be very foolish to publish his article, which he now saw as a “bonfire of self-incrimination” (70). However, when Pollan expressed his concern to his editor, Rick MacArthur, he was encouraged to consult a different lawyer, one with a specialty in First Amendment cases instead of a criminal defense specialist. This new lawyer and MacArthur urged Pollan to agree to publish his article as an important political statement on the drug war that should be allowed as a part of freedom of the press. With MacArthur’s assurances that Harper’s Magazine would pay for any fines and legal defense costs necessary, financially support his wife in the event of his imprisonment, and even buy Pollan a new home if required, Pollan allowed the magazine to publish his article. To decrease his chances of being prosecuted, however, Pollan omitted a passage that describes how he harvested his poppy seeds and made opium tea.

Pollan then returns to the omitted passage of his original work in which he describes harvesting his poppies’ seed pods in late autumn, ground their seeds in a coffee grinder, and steeped them in hot water for 15 minutes before drinking. He describes the taste as “truly awful,” leaving him feeling “queasy” (75). After 10 minutes Pollan notices he does not have any more physical aches or pains and feels in a very good mood, passive and content. Pollan goes outside to remove the rest of his poppies, choosing to compost them with other garden debris. He ponders how perhaps the poppy creates alkaloids that relieve human pain since its evolution has been “guided by the hand of human interest,” as people planted more potent poppies so they could harvest them and make use of their medicinal effects (79).

The author reflects on the ever-changing—and arbitrary—set of legal codes in America that separate licit and illicit plants. He notes that his own land was once owned by a man who used apples from his apple tree to produce apple cider. Unfortunately, this cider was banned during the prohibition years of 1920 to 1933, during which time alcohol was considered an illegal substance. Ironically, many women who belonged to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union would have enjoyed “women’s tonics” that included opium among their ingredients, a perfectly legal indulgence at that time (80). Pollan builds on this reflection to argue that the government’s list of illicit drugs is based on arbitrary criteria that is not based on toxicity, addictiveness, or recreational pleasure. He argues that we are living in “even stranger times” than his predecessor did and that what happens in people’s homes, gardens, and bodies is only their business (82).

Pollan recounts that he felt anxious after publishing his piece in Harper's Magazine, but he was never bothered by law enforcement. He guesses that the government wanted to avoid a high-profile legal battle with a prominent publication and keep their anti-opium activities quiet. He reflects on how while he was caught up worrying about the government’s interest in his poppy growing activities, he missed the real story happening in the late 1990s: the development and aggressive marketing of OxyContin, a highly addictive pain killing prescription opiate, which has gone on to have a devastating effect on many people’s lives. Pollan feels that the war on drugs has been “doing so much to erode our liberties and fill our prisons” while also diverting our attention from the addiction crisis stemming from legal prescription drugs (85). While the war on drugs may seem to be waning, Pollan reports that there were over 1 million drug-related arrests made in the US during 2019 alone. Meanwhile, the creators of Oxycontin, the Sackler family, were fined over eight billion dollars to compensate states and individuals affected by OxyContin addiction.