Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
view the rest of the comments
I read, when you eat stuff with poppy seeds, some tests are false positive, because the plants are closely related.
Not closely related, Opium is made from the same plant as poppy seeds, the plant is aptly named the opium poppy. (This is the cash crop of afghanistan, which supplies 80% of the worlds opiate demand as of 2021, down from 90% in 2011, but currently in the rise again.) Old info see comment below
The seeds dont have opiates in them, but the fluid in the seed pod (or something like that) does so the seeds are typically contaminated with opiates.
https://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan/Opium_cultivation_Afghanistan_2022.pdf
That info is outdated; the Taliban have heavily cracked down on opium cultivation to the extent that their total crop yield saw a “95% decline from 6,200 tons produced in 2022 to 333 tons in 2023”.
https://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan/Afghanistan_opium_survey_2023.pdf
I did not know that, thank you for the link. That graph of production looks like my stock portfolio lol.
I remember in the 2000s reading that production soared after we invaded and kicked the taliban back. Wonder how this will impact the heroin epidemic.
It’s an interesting question! My understanding is that it may affect opiates like heroin, but not opioids (fentanyl, oxycodone, novacaine etc) as opiates are naturally derived whereas opioids are synthetic.
This opinion piece from Chatham House says before 2023, Afghanistan was responsible for over 80% of global opium supply, so I’d say the impact on the heroin market will be significant to say the least.
https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/the-world-today/2023-08/why-talibans-opium-ban-will-probably-fail
In my armchair opinion, I think we’re likely to see opioids like fentanyl fill that gap. That scares me a lot given the relative strengths at identical concentrations of heroin and fentanyl vary so wildly.