Can a Poppy Seed Food Addict Pass a Drug Test?
✍ Scribed by Judith M. Bonicamp; Ida L. Santana
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 66 KB
- Volume
- 58
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0026-265X
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
A dilemma encountered in drug testing is distinguishing among the drugs and human metabolites from legal use of prescription opiates (morphine, codeine, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, and dihydrocodeine), innocent ingestion of poppy seeds in food (morphine and codeine), and true drug abuse (heroin, 6-monoacetylmorphine, and morphine). The heroin metabolite, 6monoacetylmorphine, does not result from eating poppy seeds, and it is from this distinction that we pursued our experimentation. We can differentiate heroin, codeine, morphine, and their metabolites from each other using a simplified and accelerated thin-layer chromatographic technique employing special sample application disks and a sequence of detection reactions. The detection limit for opiates is 1 mg/mL from urine by liquid-liquid extraction. Further improvement in the detection limit results when solid phase extraction columns are employed, giving a detection limit of about 200 ng/mL for unconjugated morphine and other opiates. The information in our report can help to prevent innocent poppy seed eaters from being falsely accused of drug abuse.