Poppy Seeds False Positive Testing

Just under a year ago I was introduced to the yummy indulgence of lemon poppy seed muffins. I had always avoided them in years past because I thought they were sick looking!! When I first tasted the delectable savory flavor my taste buds fell in love!! I recently purchased some lemon poppy seed scones which I had never tried before and shared them with co-workers only to get "you better not have to take a drug test tomorrow!" I've heard things about these wonderful little seeds but never got curious enough to research the idea that they could actually be harmful in the sense of failing a drug test! Well, some days I am blessed to have a quiet enough day at work to surf the net & research these untold secrets. :) Here's what Wikipedia had to say about those tiny little fun-packed seeds:

A poppy is any of a number of showy flowers, typically with one per stem, belonging to the poppy family. They include a number of attractive wildflower species with showy flowers found growing singularly or in large groups; many species are also grown in gardens. Those that are grown in gardens include large plants used in a mixed herbaceous boarder and small plants that are grown in rock or alpine gardens.
The flower color of poppy species include: white, pink, yellow, orange, red and blue; some have dark center markings. The species that have been cultivated for many years also include many other colors ranging from dark solid colors to soft pastel shades. The center of the flower has a whorl of stamens surrounded by a cup- or bowl-shaped collection of four to six petals. Prior to blooming, the petals are crumpled in bud, and as blooming finishes, the petals often lie flat before falling away.

Poppies may be found in the genera:
Meconopsis – Himalayan poppy, Welsh poppy and relatives.
Papaver – Iceland poppy, Oriental poppy, Opium poppy, corn poppy and about 120 other species.
Romneya – Matilija poppy and relatives.
Eschscholzia – California poppy and relatives.
Stylophorum – Celandine-poppy, mock poppy, yellow-poppy, wood-poppy.
Argemone – Prickly-poppy
Canbya – Pygmy-poppy
Stylomecon – Wind-poppy
Arctomecon – Desert bearclaw-poppy
Hunnemannia – Tulip poppy
Dendromecon – Tree poppy

Here's an opium/codeine drug information overload!!!

Although the drug opium is produced by "milking" latex from the unripe fruits ("seed pods") rather than from the seeds, all parts of the plant can contain or carry the opium alkaloids, especially morphine and codeine. This means that eating foods (e.g., muffins) that contain poppy seeds can result in a false positive for opiates in a drug test.
This was considered "confirmed" by the presenters of the television program MythBusters. One participant, Adam Savage, who ate an entire loaf of poppy seed cake, tested positive for opiates just half an hour later. A second participant, Jamie Hyneman, who ate three poppy seed bagels, first tested positive two hours after eating. Both tested positive for the remainder of the day, but were clean eighteen hours later.

The show Brainiac: Science Abuse also did experiments where a priest ate several poppy seed bagels and gave a sample, which also resulted in a false positive.
The results of this experiment are inconclusive, because a test was used with an opiate cutoff level of 300 ng/mL instead of the current SAMHSA recommended cutoff level used in the NIDA 5 test, which was raised from 300 ng/mL to 2,000 ng/mL in 1998 in order to avoid false positives from poppy seeds.

However, according to an article published in the Medical Science Law Journal, after ingesting "a curry meal or two containing various amounts of washed seeds" where total morphine levels were in the range 58.4 to 62.2 µg/g seeds, the urinary morphine levels were found to range as high as 1.27 µg/mL (1,270 ng/mL) urine .

Another article in the Journal of Forensic Science reports that concentration of morphine in some batches of seeds may be as high as 251 µg/g. In both studies codeine was also present in the seeds in smaller concentrations. Therefore it is possible to cross the current standard 2,000 ng/mL limit of detection, depending on seed potency and quantity ingested. Some toxicology labs still continue to use a cutoff level of 300 ng/mL.
The sale of poppy seeds from Papaver somniferum is banned in Singapore due to the morphine content. Poppy seeds are also banned in Saudi Arabia due to various religious and drug control reasons.

Whoa man!! Where'd that come from!?!? Too many poppy seeds for me...how bout you? :) Well, just think long & hard before you indulge the next time...you never know when you'll have to pass a drug test. :)