Be very careful with what poppies you buy. Some are very toxic.
I'm curious about this.
Papaver bracteatum is a type of poppy which apparently does not contain morphine, but does contain thebaine - which produces nasty and dangerous effects if consumed in high doses. A google image search reveals that p.bracteatum looks only vaguely similar to p.somniferum (that is, if you know your poppies and have an interest in plants, otherwise they look similar), with red petals, a dark crown, and dark stamen, as opposed to the variety of coloured petals, yellow-to-green crown, and light stamen of the p.somniferum. I guess dried pods might be a lot harder to differentiate, and seeds harder still (but I'm not actually sure as I haven't seen p.bracteatum pods or seeds).
A person would not want to harvest and consume any p.bracteatum product, and it would be a bad vendor who sold such products as p.somniferum.
But there's another issue which is more persistently confusing...
I've researched poppy types and as far as dangerous toxicity in the somniferum family goes, am only aware of the high-thebaine strains which are grown in Tasmania (Australia) for the production of some modern opioids (OXYgoodness, for instance). I believe the thebaine content is high enough to be very unpleasant or potentially dangerous if consumed. However, I don't think I've heard of any definitive cases where someone actually had a high-thebaine strain in their garden/grow and/or became very ill as a result of consumption. People get sick from opium products because they contain a powerful and unpredictable cocktail of alkaloids - feeling nauseous and even puking is part and parcel of the experience for people with low tolerance (or sometimes even for those who have a tolerance). I think this might have led to misunderstandings in the past, with people getting a strong batch and thinking they've been poisoned (which they kind of have - overdose on opiates is unpleasant) by something that shouldn't be in the mix.
This second case of 'toxic poppy which looks like good poppy and is out there' almost seems like an urban myth, along with various speculations about how to identify this type (if it bleeds red latex, it's dangerous! - has been going around for years). I know there is indeed a high-thebaine poppy which looks like the high-morphine poppy, the question is: Is it actually circulating amongst non-pharmaceutical growers and should 'home enthusiasts' be worried about it?
Years ago I looked up the relevant government websites relating to Tasmanian grown poppies used for pharmaceutical produce, and it actually stated on the site that the high-thebaine variety seeds are destroyed after harvest, while the high-morhpine strain - and only that strain - are cleaned and sent off to be sold as culinary stock (ie. the seeds you buy in the supermarket spice aisle). So those special seeds - named the "Norman" strain, I think - shouldn't be 'out there in the public field', so to speak. At least not in significant numbers.
I'd be really appreciative if someone could say definitively whether that variety is 'out in the field' and whether anyone has reasonable evidence suggesting that someone has actually become sick from consumption of it. I think it's an interesting issue.
Thanks