I was reading up on various kinds of drugs, when I found
opiate drugs. These drugs are derived from, or chemically similar to those
derived from, the opium poppy. This reminded me of a Seinfeld episode where
Elaine is going on vacation with her boss, for work related issues, but she
needs to pass a drug test. They administer the drug test and she fails! They
find trace amounts of opiates in her system. This being because every morning
before going to work she stops by a local diner and orders a poppy seed muffin.
It’s weird how a simple poppy seed muffin provides similar chemicals to those
found in drugs like heroin. I personally love poppy seeds so I can just imagine
going into a drug test and failing because I ate a poppy seed muffin earlier. I
also read that because of this skewed result some federal prisons prohibit
inmates from eating these types of baked goods. This has happened so much so,
that the federal test threshold for morphine and codeine has been raised from
300 nanograms per millileter to 2,000. Federal agents figure that this will
eliminate most of the false positives by eating too many poppy seed muffins. So
fellow readers, next time you go into a drug test don’t eat any poppy seeds for
breakfast.
This video shows exactly what I’m writing about. The fact
that it’s a mythbusters episode, which I love, helps too. It’s a little long
but if you fast forward to the end it shows you that the urine, in fact, does test positive
for opiates.
I love how you further went into detail of how opiates are derived from the opium poppy. I had always heard that but i never believed this to be true. I always figured it was some excuse people came up with. I love you presented your information & that video fit extremely well. I can't imagine receiving a false positive for using opiates just because I were to eat a poppy seeds for breakfast. I would be very interested in finding out how someone would be able to tell if it was poppy seeds eaten for breakfast or the actual abuse of the drug. People lie all the time so could someone who is using opiates just say "OH its poppy seeds" and get away with it or does it all come down to the effects opiates cause?
ReplyDeleteLike Yaritza I've also heard of this but i never quite believed it. Now that I see it with my own eyes (sort of) I realize that these false positives can cause a great deal of grief for people. It makes me wonder though if the new level, 2000 nanograms per milliliter instead of 300, really made a difference in the number of false positives. And how would you find out how many nanograms a person has through one of those urine test strips, or would you have to actually analyze the urine?
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