How to Use opium poppy in a Sentence

opium poppy

noun
  • Poppy seeds come from the opium poppy plant, which is also the source of opioid drugs.
    — Melissa Rudy, Fox News, 28 Mar. 2023
  • Heroin comes from the opium poppy, and methadone is synthetic.
    — Carol Sutton Lewis, Scientific American, 30 Mar. 2023
  • The Greeks worshipped the opium poppy, and so did the Egyptians.
    — Jerry Mitchell and Laura Ungar, The Courier-Journal, 28 Jan. 2018
  • Javed’s unit arrested traffickers, raided drug labs, and set fire to fields of mauve opium poppies.
    — Matthew Wolfe, Harper's magazine, 10 Feb. 2019
  • The opium poppy is one of the oldest medicinal plants in history.
    — Molly Enking, Smithsonian Magazine, 22 Sep. 2022
  • Heroin is produced from morphine, a natural substance drawn from opium poppy plants.
    — Terry Demio, Cincinnati.com, 11 Sep. 2017
  • There’s no need to grow vast fields of opium poppies, which must be defended against weather, competitors and government eyes.
    — Fortune, 6 June 2018
  • The country accounts for more than 90% of the world’s opium poppy cultivation.
    — Los Angeles Times, 14 Feb. 2020
  • Papaver somniferum is the scientific name for the opium poppy plant.
    — Allison Futterman, Discover Magazine, 16 Mar. 2022
  • Most of the world’s opium poppy had come from just three countries — Afghanistan, Myanmar and Mexico.
    — Mary Beth Sheridan, Washington Post, 13 Dec. 2022
  • Because poppy seeds come from the opium poppy plant, which is also the source of opioid drugs, the seeds are coated with trace amounts of the illicit substances.
    — Melissa Rudy, Fox News, 28 Mar. 2023
  • Unlike the opium poppy, coffee and tea plants do not press Pollan into service as a propagator.
    — Washington Post, 23 July 2021
  • Derived from the opium poppy, opioids alleviate pain by binding to opioid receptors in the brain.
    — Leah Shaffer, Discover Magazine, 24 Feb. 2016
  • Synthetic opioids are derived from the opium poppy plant, and opium has been known for its addictive properties for thousands of years.
    — Paul Schrodt, Men's Health, 10 Aug. 2023
  • Drug overdose deaths have spiked to record highs in recent years, primarily due to the spread of opioids, a class of drug found in or derived from chemicals found in the opium poppy plant.
    — Robert Hart, Forbes, 3 May 2023
  • Poppy seeds for baking come from Papaver somniferum, commonly known as breadseed or opium poppy.
    — oregonlive, 7 May 2022
  • There were projects to reduce opium poppy cultivation, promote women’s rights and hold credible elections.
    — Washington Post, 31 Aug. 2021
  • Since antiquity, humans have utilized the power of the opium poppy to ease pain, treat disease and generate euphoria.
    — Jon Kelvey, Smithsonian, 13 Jan. 2017
  • For decades, intelligence agencies have been able to monitor acres of foreign coca farms and opium poppy fields from the air before crops were turned into cocaine and heroin.
    — oregonlive, 4 Sep. 2023
  • Then in 2010, a Canadian team identified the last two missing pieces of the morphine puzzle in the genome of opium poppy.
    — Luc Henry, Discover Magazine, 9 Sep. 2014
  • In recent years, its opium poppy fields have been giving way to jungle laboratories, as the demand for synthetic drugs outstrips the demand for heroin.
    — Preeti Jha, CNN, 17 Aug. 2020
  • The Mexican army has tried for decades to eradicate opium poppies—the raw material for heroin, morphine and other drugs—but struggles to keep up with new plantings.
    — Dudley Althaus, WSJ, 4 Aug. 2017
  • Many of them immigrated to the United States; others stayed behind and replaced corn with opium poppies, for producing heroin.
    — Dan Kaufman, The New Yorker, 28 Oct. 2023
  • And so of course scientists were looking for a way of synthesizing this with other base chemicals that don’t require the opium poppy, and that was successful in the creation of fentanyl.
    — The Politics Of Everything, The New Republic, 29 Sep. 2021
  • Growers in Guerrero, like those in northwest Mexico, also moved away from marijuana to focus on opium poppies.
    — David Agren, USA TODAY, 20 Feb. 2018
  • Opium, a drug derived from the opium poppy, has been known and used for more than 7,000 years, according to History Today.
    — Ella Lee, USA TODAY, 13 Jan. 2022
  • For more than 200 years, doctors have soothed their patients’ pain with morphine, the drug isolated from the opium poppy and named after Morpheus, Greek god of dreams.
    — Jon Kelvey, Smithsonian, 13 Jan. 2017
  • And long before the current opioid epidemic, opium, the highly-addictive narcotic derived from the opium poppy plant, was a respectable go-to pain reliever.
    — CBS News, 26 Apr. 2020
  • While morphine is still produced in plantations of opium poppies, the discovery of an enzyme that increases the tyrosine used to make the painkilling molecule could have effects on how that drug and others are made.
    — Veronique Greenwood, New York Times, 24 Oct. 2017
  • The United States has spent about $9 billion to fight the problem over the past 18 years, but Afghan farmers are cultivating more opium poppies than ever.
    — Craig Whitlock, Anchorage Daily News, 9 Dec. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'opium poppy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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