Opium poppies found in Bengueta

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – Some 295 full-grown and half-grown specimens of what are believed to be opium poppies planted in a flower garden in Atok town were discovered by policemen last Tuesday.

Atok town police chief Senior Inspector Marvin Diplat said in a telephone interview that the poppy plants, ranging in height from two to five feet, were planted in a cutflower garden along Kilometer 46.

"It was planted just beside the national highway (Baguio-Bontoc Road, otherwise known as Halsema Highway)," he said.

The town of Atok, one and a half hours from Baguio City, is known for its vegetable plantations.

Diplat said the garden, which measured only 50 square meters, "got our attention after residents got curious about the beautiful flower garden just beside the highway."

Police investigators found that a local cut flower grower (whose identity is being withheld) had planted the poppy seeds, not knowing the plant was prohibited.

"The seeds came from London," Diplat said, adding that the grower has a sibling working in London and had asked for seeds to grow in his lot.

Diplat said the poppy seeds may have been mistakenly included as cut flower seeds in the package.

"What is disturbing is how those prohibited seeds passed through customs," he said.

Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Cordillera Administrative Region (PDEA-CAR) agents who went to the agency’s Manila headquarters with some 20 samples of the plants confirmed that they are indeed opium poppies.

"This is the first time that a poppy plantation was found in the Cordillera," perhaps even in the Philippines, said Chief Inspector Paul Mencio, who heads the intelligence division of PDEA-CAR.

Mencio, a veteran anti-narcotics officer, said authorities will burn the poppy plants. The cut flower grower may also find himself answerable to the anti-narcotics law even if he did not know what he had planted because ignorance of the law excuses no one, he said.

Cordillera is still known as the country’s biggest producer of marijuana because of numerous plantations in far-flung villages in Benguet, Kalinga, Ifugao and the boundaries Benguet shares with the provinces of Ilocos Sur and La Union.

According to Diplat, the poppy plants have been harvested once, with the cut flowers having gone to various markets, including Metro Manila.

He believes that the cut flower grower might have really mistaken them as flowers good for selling.

The flowers really look good and an unsuspecting onlooker would not know it is the plant that produces opium, Diplat said.

The cut flower grower first planted the poppy seeds during the last quarter of 2006 and planted another batch this January.