Fine weather brings Drax's opium poppies into bloom

THE hottest spring in a century has produced a remarkable show of opium poppies which are now blooming on an estate owned by South Dorset MP Richard Drax.

Acres of land owned by Mr Drax near Bere Regis have been turned over to the poppies in order to produce morphine for the NHS.

There is a shortage of the pain-killing drug in hospitals and swathes of the English countryside have now been transformed into poppy fields, which are usually associated with Afghanistan.

The Home Office has granted a licence to a pharmaceutical company to grow and harvest the poppy heads in order to produce both codeine and morphine.

Mr Drax’s estate is one of more than 30 sites across the country where the opium poppies are now being grown.

A spokesman for the estate confirmed the plants were being grown for pharmaceutical company MacFarlan Smith.

Mr Drax said: “It’s not just me, it’s farmers across the land who are growing this crop for medicinal use.

“I’m not turning into a drug dealer.

“This crop is used for medicine and is very beneficial because without it you can’t operate.”

The warm and dry spring appears to have yielded the Tory MP a bumper crop as the flowers from the plants have transformed his fields into a sea of lilac.

Once the poppy heads are harvested and dried the seed pods inside are processed and turned into morphine and codeine.

The process requires a degree of expertise which is why growers are confident the flowers will not be stolen by drug dealers looking to turn them into heroin.

A spokesman for pharmaceutical company MacFarlan Smith, whose parent company Johnson Matthey has the licence to grow the poppies, said: “We have been growing the poppies in the UK since 2003.

“We have got a small amount of supplies, about 35, and we aren’t looking to expand.

“The poppies are grown for morphine production, for people in the UK who are in pain and suffering from cancer.

Question about poppy seeds

Get a pound or so... go bulk, a health food store is best. put them into an empty plastic bottle. add enough water (hot, not boiling, and add some lemon or grapefruit juice) until it's a few inches above the seeds. Shake it up, let it sit for a half hour or so, shaking occasionally. Strain the juice, don't drink it all at once. Add more water to the bottle of seeds to make a second batch. Use extra lemon and let it sit longer...

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