Opium - Poppy Cultivation, Morphine and Heroin Manufacture
- Jim Hogshire
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The scoring of the pods (also called 'lancing,' 'incising,' or 'tapping') begins about two weeks after the flower petals fall from the pods. The farmer examines the pod and the tiny crown portion on the top of the pod very carefully before scoring.
The grayish-green pod will become a dark green color as it matures and it will swell in size. If the points of the pod's crown are standing straight out or are curved upward, the pod is ready to be scored. If the crown's points turn downward, the pod is not yet fully matured. Not all the plants in a field will be ready for scoring at the same time and each pod can be tapped more than once.
A set of three or four small blades of iron, glass, or glass splinters bound tightly together on a wooden handle is used to score two or three sides of the pod in a vertical direction. If the blades cut too deep into the wall of the pod, the opium will flow too quickly and will drip to the ground. If the incisions are too shallow, the flow will be too slow and the opium will harden in the pods. A depth of about one millimeter is desired for the incision.
Using a blade-tool designed to cut to that depth, scoring ideally starts in late afternoon so the white raw opium latex can ooze out and slowly coagulate on the surface of the pod overnight. If the scoring begins too early in the afternoon, the sun will cause the opium to coagulate over the incision and block the flow. Raw opium oxidizes, darkens and thickens in the cool night air. Early the next morning, the opium gum is scraped from the surface of the pods with a short-handled, flat, iron blade three to four inches wide.
Opium harvesters work their way backwards across the field scoring the lower, mature pods before the taller pods, in order to avoid brushing up against the sticky pods. The pods continue to produce opium for several days. Farmers will return to these plants - sometimes up to five or six times - to gather additional opium until the pod is totally depleted.
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The wet opium gum collected from the pods contains a relatively high percentage of water and needs to be dried for several days. High-quality raw opium will be brown (rather than black) in color and will retain its sticky texture.
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Before opium is smoked, it is usually 'cooked'. Uncooked opium contains moisture, as well as soil, leaves, twigs, and other impurities which diminish the quality of the final product. The raw opium collected from the opium poppy pods is placed in an open cooking pot of boiling water where the sticky globs of opium alkaloids quickly dissolve. Soil, twigs, plant scrapings, etc., remain undissolved. The solution is then strained through cheesecloth to remove these impurities. The clear brown liquid that remains is opium in solution, sometimes called 'liquid opium'. This liquid is then re-heated over a low flame until the water is driven off into the air as steam leaving a thick dark brown paste. This paste is called 'prepared', 'cooked', or 'smoking' opium. It is dried in the sun until it has a putty-like consistency. The net weight of the cooked opium is generally only eighty percent that of the original raw opium. Thus, cooked opium is more pure than its original, raw form, and has a higher monetary value.
Cooked opium is suitable for smoking or eating by opium users. Traditionally there is only one group of opium poppy farmers, the Hmong, who prefer not to cook their opium before smoking. Most other ethnic groups, including Chinese opium addicts, prefer smoking cooked opium.
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