Community | March 04, 2010 | 23 comments

How the DEA Scrubbed Thomas Jefferson's Monticello Poppy Garden from Public Memory | | AlterNet

source: http://www.alternet.org/story/145872/how_the_dea_scrubbed_thomas_jefferson%27s_monticello_po...

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WeAreChangeKy
Visitors to Monticello don't learn how Jefferson cultivated poppies, and his personal opium use may as well never have happened.

March 3, 2010 |

The following is an excerpt from Jim Hogshire's "Opium for the Masses: Harvesting Nature's Best Pain Medication" (Feral House, 2009).

Thomas Jefferson was a drug criminal. But he managed to escape the terrible sword of justice by dying a century before the DEA was created. In 1987 agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency showed up at Monticello, Jefferson's famous estate.


Jefferson had planted opium poppies in his medicinal garden, and opium poppies are now deemed illegal. Now, the trouble was the folks at the Monticello Foundation, which preserves and maintains the historic site, were discovered flagrantly continuing Jefferson's crimes. The agents were blunt: The poppies had to be immediately uprooted and destroyed or else they were going to start making arrests, and Monticello Foundation personnel would perhaps face lengthy stretches in prison.


The story sounds stupid now, but it scared the hell out of the people at Monticello, who immediately started yanking the forbidden plants. A DEA man noticed the store was selling packets of "Thomas Jefferson's Monticello Poppies." The seeds had to go, too. While poppy seeds might be legal, it is never legal to plant them. Not for any reason.
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23 comments // How the DEA Scrubbed Thomas Jefferson's Monticello Poppy Garden from Public Memory | | AlterNet

  • ampersand
    • 0
      ampersand  

    • I have some seeds from Monticello in my garden. I don't remember the poppy crop on display or those seeds in the shop, but I think in respect to the memory of Thomas Jefferson and his passion for liberty we should all get out to the garden this week and get those poppy seeds in the ground.

    • 1 year ago
  • remanns
  • Madhatter244
    • +1
      Madhatter244  

    • How else would drug companies make profits from Codeine and Morphine if we already grow our own? How would they profit from the monacolin found in Red yeast rice? How would they profit from the weight-loss benefits of vitamin B-6?

      less focus on DEA and more on the FDA

      FDA is very very dangerous

    • 1 year ago
  • Oni_noni
  • Oni_noni
    • +1
      Oni_noni  

    • Soon, sugar will be an illegal substance, since it makes people fat. So will tobacco, even though it's more American than apple pie. Soon, we'll all be so effing healthy and depressed that we'll overthrow the government and eat and smoke and drink and stick into our anuses whatever we please.........

      ahem. What I mean is, all this restrictive, fascist crap just makes criminals out of otherwise outstanding politicians. Something is wrong here.

    • 1 year ago
  • 02
  • CarolineS
  • existentialist
  • remanns
  • nursediesel
    • +2
      nursediesel  

    • This is the loss of our individual freedoms that have been occurring as the government slowly eroded them from the people. Someday we'll be outlawed to have a well on our land for personal use because you can die of water intoxication.(it's true.) The government breeds fear in the public to control us.

      Someday soon the government will control every aspect of our individual lives as we smile, happily because they are PROTECTING us for our OWN GOOD!

    • 1 year ago
  • bailey78
    • +1
      bailey78  

    • So am I to understand that if I buy some poppy seeds and plant them I will be breaking the law? Well I will be planting a lot of seed. use your rights or loose them.

    • 1 year ago
  • 02
  • remanns
  • diabolical44
    • +5
      diabolical44  

    • how the hell does our gov't have the balls to outlaw nature? whether it be marijuana or poppies or coca or anything else. These are plants that occur in nature. How can you outlaw a plant? it is ludicrous.

    • 1 year ago
  • UtopianSky
  • diabolical44
    • +4
      diabolical44  
    • UtopianSky:

      they're useful things too. and not dangerous in any way until refined and made into dangerous substances. The same can be said for Poppies and Coca plants. they have many positive uses but can also be abused and refined into dangerous substances.

    • 1 year ago
  • nursediesel
    • 0
      nursediesel  
    • diabolical44:

      Just like now... you have to stand in line and give all your personal info and a photo ID, and sign the paper/screen to get a decongestant so you can breathe through your nose! Who's brilliant idea was it to add that little tidbit to the Patriot Act? Like I'm going to go home and cook up a bunch of lethal drugs....

    • 1 year ago
  • WeAreChangeKy
    • +1
      WeAreChangeKy  
    • diabolical44:

      Technically, Biblically speaking, one could say that banning a plant is tantamount to Blasphemy. They are basically saying that God or Nature, if you like, made a mistake. That's silly, everything is here for a reason.

    • 1 year ago
  • UtopianSky
  • 02
    • +1
      02  
    • UtopianSky:

      There is an aspect to slavery that should be at least added to one's perusal of the subject.

      Slavery was what happened all around them - however evil and everyone, including Jefferson knew it. I believe he wrote about it.

      But what have we today? Let's see, you get a job, making things for far less than they are sold for and are paid some amount that forces you to return. You may not be making enough to sustain a living -but even if you are breaking even every month, you accrue no more than what it takes you to maintain your working life and therefore your entire effort can be seen as supporting the endeavor of your employers, 100% for them, 0% left for you.

      So you are a slave right now. Only the masters are snickering and laughing at you because you have to come up with your clothes, your medical and dental and food and transport and probably insurance - in which, by the way, your employers undoubtedly own stock.

      If there were slavery, at least you'd have your little life without all the worries.

      But then, if you were Jefferson - maybe, just maybe - you'd have a chance to think of the people you could manage to keep from the slave markets.
      Remember: that was their reality.

      You have to ask yourself - if you've ever really considered that aspect. In so far as it is easy to decide things in blacks or whites.

      And ps: Jefferson went broke - slaves, however were worth more money than he ever owed anybody.

    • 1 year ago
  • axion775
    • 0
      axion775  

    • My old high school was right next to this platation. We would take feild trips out there for history classes. I remember seeing these famous poppy feilds but we were never allowed to go near them.

    • 1 year ago
  • medHead
  • axion775
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