Day 158/20. Growing drugs?....

We found a huge Poppy field in full bloom this morning.
Opium poppies (Papaver somniferum) are becoming a lucrative crop for British farmers. Poppy growing on a commercial scale was prompted by a world-wide shortage of morphine.
The seedpods of opium poppies are full of a milky latex which dries to an amber-coloured resin, rich in codeine, morphine, narceine, narcotine, papaverine and thebaine, all of significant use to medicine makers.
All the crops in Britain are grown under licence.
These may not be opiate poppies, poppies are also sown as a part of the crop rotation ( a much duller reason than for drug production).
But for a brief period of time, the fields of red poppies are spectacular.