The Opium poppy (papaver somniferum) has been around since millennia, to which its beneficial properties of its highly effective pain relief, tranquility, as well as being a sleep aid, have been of a great welfare for mankind. In today's society the opium poppy has been demonized to which the American government has spent billions of dollars attempting to eradicate and/or control opium production to absolute abject failure as well as on the other hand, promoting and acceding to pharmaceutical demands that opium derived drugs such as heroin, morphine, codeine, oxycontin, and vicodin, are medically prescribed to the general public for pain relief.
In addition, to the legal prevention of opium poppy direct usage by the general population, as well as severe penalties for the usage of such and/or distribution of such by those without expressed written permission by the United States governmental authorities, opiates are still "abused" by the public each and every day. In absence of having a legal prescription to opiates and/or a legal access to opium, Americans will get their opiates from either the "street" or through third parties that specialize in providing a product for those that are in need, with all the obvious attendant problems that doing something like this presents, such as crime and lack of quality control. Not too surprisingly, people die from the over-dosage of bad or contaminated product; lose their livelihood from the abuse of such, and commit crimes in order to feed this particular addiction or habit.
America is living in world of complete opium poppy hypocrisy, to which on the one hand, any and everybody that abuses the product in a way not legally permitted by the United States justice authorities are severely punished, regardless of whether the crime has no victim, other than the person using the opium in an unauthorized way. On the other hand, however, America allows, permits, and even encourages pharmaceutical agencies to prescribe and promote all conceivable forms of substitutionary opiates to the general public that cost the Americans and medical insurance companies billions upon billions of dollars.
This means, in effect, that all America has really done over recent years is taken the permission of the opium poppy from being used by the common man, and through their legal and policing authority, replaced it so that the pharmaceutical companies directly benefit from the prescription and control of product, while the public has to pay billions of dollars in order to access the beneficial properties of the opium poppy.
If the opium poppy is evil, in and of itself, and if the opium poppy is nefarious, malicious, addictive, and destructive, than all derivatives of opium, without exception, should also be illegal to prescribe, procure, or create within America, but this clearly is not the case. This means, that the America public has been duped, that in fact, the beneficial properties of opium and control of such have been transferred to pharmaceutical companies so that they can directly profit upon man's pain and misery, whereas, mankind would be far better served if it had legal access to the opium poppy itself with minimal governmental intrusion.