That Michael Pollan did not use his poppies to make opium tea clearly shows
the chilling effect of the war on drugsalthough I, for one, have set the
tea kettle to boiling.
In the small and isolated community where I live there is an abundance of
poppies growing in people's gardens. My eightysixyearold neighbor tells
me that in the early 1900s, after the railroad was punched through the
northern continental divide, many of the workers (recent arrivals to our
verdant shores) chose to settle here. They brought with them their unique
pharmacopeia of homegrown remedies, and one of their curatives was opium
tea. My neighbor no longer makes her own "medicine," though. She prefers
instead a quick and legal fix of Jack Daniel's.

Ronald E. Krueger
Hungry Horse, Mont.