'Meet our supermarket junkies'

[Conan Troutman]

By Mark Schliebs

July 28, 2008 10:00am

Article from: NEWS.com.au

* Opiates sold in supermarkets give 12-hour high

* Gangs get pokies-playing pensioners to buy chemicals

* GPs not told about fake patients just after drugs

Supermarket junkies are legally buying powerful opiates straight off store shelves to brew "poppy seed tea" which provides a 12-hour high, a NEWS.com.au investigation has found.

Australians who drink the tea claim the best poppy seeds can be found at wholesalers, but many big-name supermarkets often have good "batches".

"Poppy seed tea is very much like morphine and a hell of a lot cheaper," a 19-year-old Brisbane user said.

A 17-year-old user from Adelaide said if "you do this right, you get f**ked up… This is the best high I’ve had for such a small price".

NEWS.com.au’s investigations have uncovered a subculture of supermarket drug addicts exploiting lax rules and regulations to develop habits with side-effects as deadly as illegal street drugs.

Our inquiries have found:

* Legal opiates on sale in many supermarkets across the country.

* Claims that retirees are recruited to cruise pharmacies as "pseudo-runners" for chemicals needed to make drugs like speed and ice.

* "Doctor shopping" rife with quarterly surveys showing up to 45,000 Australians going from doctor to doctor to obtain prescriptions for powerful drugs with minimal warnings from Medicare.

Enlarge Drugs in Australia: Our in-depth interactive

Poppy seed tea drinkers have told NEWS.com.au enough morphine or codeine can be extracted from the seeds to achieve a high that lasts well over 12 hours.

"To me, using many different drugs is like being a wine connoisseur – tasting many different varieties, learning the subtle differences between drugs that are similar and, of course, having favourites that I seek out and always return to," said one user, known as Yosef.

There is "a huge variation in the active ingredients (in supermarket poppy seeds)… which are opiates," says Professor Steve Allsop, director of the National Drug Research Institute.

"It's not common, but there have been cases where consumers have become addicted," he said.

Others have warned an addiction to poppy seed tea could be fatal.

One US user’s father, known as Tom, created the "Poppy Seed Tea Can Kill You" website with his wife after his 17-year-old son died of a morphine and codeine overdose after drinking the tea.

"It is really amazing to me that one of the most controlled substances out there - morphine - is in a way readily available to kids... at the supermarket," Tom has said.

In Australia there are no restrictions on the chemicals contained in poppy seeds, according to regulatory body Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ).

Inquiries to the federal Health Department were not returned.

Gateway drug

After five out of 24 patients at a drug clinic admitted their main source of opiates was from poppy seeds, health officials in New Zealand decided that the tea could be used to wean addicts off heroin.

"(Poppy seed tea) could be considered favourably within harm reduction philosophies, because of its low cost, legal availability and oral route of administration," the officials wrote in the Drug and Alcohol Review in May, 2007.

But the researchers also said the tea could also act as a "gateway drug" that could lead to opiate dependence.

RMIT medical expert Marc Cohen believes any addiction to poppy seed tea would not be comparable to a heroin dependency. "I don’t know that a heroin addict would be able to sustain themselves on poppy seeds," he said.

Colette McGrath, the clinical services manager at Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Kings Cross, said she had heard of the tea being used by heroin addicts.

However users, along with medical experts, say the amount of opiates contained in poppy seeds depends on the batch and brand. Many users have sworn off the seeds because of this variability.

Doctor-shopping

Experts warned there were more reliable methods used to score drugs – including from doctors.

Prescription medicines like benzodiazepines (including Valium) and morphine are being routinely and easily obtained by "doctor-shoppers" who are scoring the same medicine from a range of different GPs.

Medicare told NEWS.com.au that Australia's GPs were only warned about a small fraction of people it identifies as doctor-shoppers.

Medicare maintains a special database used to identify patients that seem to go from doctor to doctor, scoring prescriptions for powerful painkillers – but the government organisation admits that very few are ever brought to the attention of GPs.

"In any given quarter, the number of patients identified under the program’s criteria range from 15,000 to 45,000 nationally," a Medicare spokeswoman said.

"It is not possible – nor necessary – to contact all of these patients or their doctors. Medicare only provides notification regarding the highest risk patients – about 5 per cent of those identified."

Once the alerts go out to the appropriate medical clinics, it is up to individual doctors to decide if a patient should receive any more prescriptions.

Continued...

[mu!]

the jig is up!

journalists.. fuckin rats

[PD.]

* Opiates sold in supermarkets give 12-hour high - maybe the first time you try it you will get lucky and thats a pretty big maybe

* Gangs get pokies-playing pensioners to buy chemicals - gangs buy drugs from pokie playing pensioners

* GPs not told about fake patients just after drugs - GPs fake patients to get drugs

[Vertmorpheus]

maybe chemists should just start selling more groceries, save the public all that walking around.

I hope they don't crack down on pod people, they're a harmless herd of never quite clammy enough poets.

"They came for the pod people and I didnt care because I wasnt one

then they came for the doctor shoppers and I didnt care because I wasnt one

they came for the bikies and I didnt care because I wasnt one

then they came for galangal, nutmeg, mace, rice wine, butane, cream bulbs, solvents and glues, star anise, reasonably priced pure essential oils, sugar, yeast, fruit juice, home brew kits, epinephrine cough syrup,tobacco, pornography, sage, cocoa, coffee, tea, red bull, gurana gum, worming tablets, metho, aged cheeses, coke, nigella, food colourings, chamomile, valerian, vervain, st johns wort, parsnips, lettuce, chillies, mint, coriander AND slightly overpriced but cheerful enough birthday cards.....

.....and I had to have meat and three veg (boiled white, Kevin Rudd white) like a Real Australian, and go to bed with a sore back"

VM

[nabraxas]

^ Vert, you crack me up...

Prescription medicines like benzodiazepines (including Valium) and morphine are being routinely and easily obtained

i know it's fairly easy to get benzos off a doctor, but is it so easy to get morphine?

i didn't think it was.

[badwolf]

Gah, here we go... Australia is one of the most tight arsed countries in the world, and now the media have their snouts in the poppyseed tea.

Hopefully there are enough bun baking old ladies around to whack the ptb in the nurries if they dare attempt to go after this.

12 hours? Who are they talking to, 5kg 12 year olds with an alergic reaction to opiates?

Oo

Every place I look, if its to do with anything natural that just happens to have a psychoactive affect, AUSTRALIA is the fist name in the "Sorry we dont ship to..." list.

FFS...

oh well, back to the bottle shop it is then..

[Yeti101]

Even Rove mentioned it on his show the other night. If that's not main-stream media coverage, I don't know what is.

I can't say that it bodes well for people who like their PS tea.