Can Eating Poppy Seeds Mark You as a Drug Addict?

Can your breakfast bagel falsely mark you as a drug abuser? It may if it is coated with poppy seeds.

If you are one of the millions of Americans who work in a job that requires drug testing before or during employment, it pays to be aware that the familiar little black poppy seeds on baked goods are from the same plant used for opium production.

Papaver somniferum is the botanical name of the opium poppy. In the drug trade, a latex type fluid taken from the unripe seedheads is processed into opium and heroin. Since ancient times, people used this as a painkiller and sedative. The poppy stems or "straw" also produce alkaloids that yield drugs. Morphine and codeine are two of the alkaloids derived from poppies. They are used extensively in modern medicine.

The ripe poppy seeds don't contain narcotics. Along with seeds of Papaver paeoniflorum they are used every day on bagels, breads, muffins and many other common baked goods. Eating them won't get you high, but they do contain the same detectable chemicals. A false positive can occur with urine testing as long as 48 hours after eating poppy seed baked goods.

According to a U.S. Department of Justice Fact Sheet, most drugs can be detected in urine samples anywhere from two days to two weeks after ingestion, and opiates generally show for about two days. The amount ingested, individual metabolism and fluid intake influence the time period.

It isn't necessary to eat a huge amount of poppy seed bakery products to have a positive drug test. The website poppies.org reported that during a test, a volunteer who ate one poppy seed bagel showed a level of 250 ng/ml in a urine sample three hours after eating. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services guidelines are 300 ng/ml for opiates, so this would be just under the positive level.

The experiment was conducted because a person who tested positive claimed to have eaten 2 poppy seed bagels for breakfast, and had results consistent with this level, 500 ng/ml. About three teaspoons of poppy seeds would produce positive levels of 1200 ng/ml.

The Snopes website which investigates whether popular stories are true or fake, verifies several cases where police officers, prison guards, job applicants and other workers have been fired or failed to be hired due to false positive tests. These cases were reversed and damages paid after proof that poppy seed baked goods were the culprits.

Law enforcement agencies now recognize the poppy seed problem, and some have raised testing standards. The U.S. military specifies 3000 ng/ml as the cutoff point for a positive result to avoid unfair accusations.

Snopes points out that the Federal Bureau of Prisons requires any inmate applying for a furlough to sign an agreement that they will not consume any poppy seeds "as a condition of participation in any community programs."

What can you do to prevent false accusations of drug abuse? A new test looks for thebaine, a chemical found in poppy seeds, but not in opiate drugs. This would prove the skewed results were due to food.

Obviously, if you know a test is coming up, don't eat poppy seeds for at least a week to be on the safe side. If the test is impromptu, be sure to tell the examiner if you have eaten them recently.