Yeah it looks like you may be correct.
However, obviously it becomes illegal if you extract the alkaloids from that straw and process them into opium or heroin.
But what about all the scenarios in between?
What about if the straw is sold for it's high alkaloid content with seller knowing the buyers intend to extract those alkaloids? Either by making a tea, or some more advanced processing.
Why don't these online pod retailers stay in business for very long?
Those sellers advertising their pods as being great for making 'special brews' etc or anything even more explicit about high alklaoids for strong brews, are surely skating on very thin ice, legally?
How can dried poppy pods, without the stems, be sold for "arts and crafts"? That seems ridiculous to me, as it's pretty difficult to do dried flower arranging with no stems to work with?Would that consitute a legal case?
What if the pods have next to no alkaloids? As in the ornamental varieties.
Making a tea out of home grown or purchased pods would also be incredibly difficult for LE to charge anyone for, I'd imagine. As you'd have to be caught in the act of making the brew and drinking it?
So many questions and ambiguities though. (I'm not expecting you to have all the answers, but many of these questions are puzzling me.)
Things seem much more straight forward in terms of growing. You can legally grow any strain but it's illegal to extract the raw opium. Simple. I think it may even be illegal to grow with the intent of doing that. But unless you had opium stained razor blades or something like that, intent could never be proved?
That guy selling the pods seemed to be pretty well established - he was going for years - maybe he just got sick of doing it? Would that change in the law regarding legal highs affect him? The thing about not being able to sell anything psychoactive? He was pretty obvious about it - "a particularly STRONG batch of turkish hens and chicks".
The only person I've ever known get busted for opium tea was ironically enough Jim Hogshire - that guy who wrote Opium for the masses. The cops burst in and found him in y-fronts drinking enough poppy tea to stun a charging silverback gorilla. The house was filled with thousands of poppy pods or some shit.
Why do you prefer poppy pods tho Bleaney? Is it a nicer high than H?