Opium is a highly addictive narcotic derived from the poppy plant, used historically for pain relief, but now mainly known for its role in producing drugs like morphine and heroin.

The Opium Poppy Control Act of 1942 tried to prevent Americans from growing poppies altogether, but it was difficult to enforce, and the act was repealed in 1970.

To nobody’s surprise, poppy seeds are the seeds of a poppy flower—specifically the papaver somniferum.This variety, also ...

Time will tell. Opium cultivation in the south effectively starts each October, when farmers decide on what they are going to plant. The poppy seedlings remain dormant over winter and begin ...

Opium poppy and Thunberg's fleabane depicted in a woodblock print by Kono Bairei, 1900. (Florilegius/Universal Images Group/Getty Images) Review by Becca Rothfeld ...

The poppy flower plant produces opium, which is what led the researchers to test the late Bronze Age artifacts for drug residue. Now, their findings are the subject of a new study published in the ...

Its subject is the industry around the white poppy flower that the East India Company cultivated for more than 150 years across India’s Gangetic plain, the base of a triangular trade that paid ...

In opium-rich Helmand province, poppy crop cultivation was down by 99.9%. Yet how successful the ban was considered depends on the source. The United Nations reported in October that poppy ...