Susan Horton had been a stay-at-home mom for almost 20 years, and now—pregnant with her fifth child—she felt a hard-won confidence in herself as a mother.

Then she ate a salad from Costco.

Horton didn’t realize that she would be drug-tested before her child’s birth. Or that the poppy seeds in her salad could trigger a positive result on a urine drug screen, the quick test that hospitals often use to check pregnant patients for illicit drugs. Many common foods and medications—from antacids to blood pressure and cold medicines—can prompt erroneous results.

If Horton had been tested under different circumstances—for example, if she was a government employee and required to be tested as part of her job—she would have been entitled to a more advanced test and to a review from a specially trained doctor to confirm the initial result.

  • naeap@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    You don’t make opium from the seeds

    You can wash them though and the “syrup” around contains morphine, codeine and stuff.
    The seeds themselves don’t get processed, but the poppy cup gets cut so this white liquid flows on the outside.

    That you scrape of and gets processed to opium or heroin.

    • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Its just sap residue but yeah, you’re spot on. Some of the alkaloids linger altho most poppy seeds are washed unless its explicitly skipped

      • naeap@sopuli.xyz
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        2 months ago

        Thanks! Couldn’t come up with the correct word and settled for “syrup” ;-)