Perhaps they are starting to integrate or cross breed with low-morphine producing varieties, but I don't see much point in this for the food/spice industry. I was always told that since poppies produce such large amounts of seed, the spice companies usually buy it from the pharmacuetical industry since there is way more seed produced each crop than they need and it is basically "waste" to the pharmacuetical companies that grow (makes sense to me). Unless it becomes required by law to only sell low-morph varieites of seed in the grocery stores, it makes no sense for the spice companies to grow their own low-morph varieities when they can just purchase/package bulk seed from the legal pharmceutical industry so cheaply. Makes more sense to me than producing your own low-morph varieties. Do you really think the spice companies care if people plant the seeds rather than eat them? They are going to just package whatever they can get until the government mandates differently.
I'm not saying all spice rack seeds will produce high-potency plants, by any means and the variety of seed may be mixed or change with each batch that's packaged by the company. So it's kind of hit and miss. If you plants some and they turn out to be good plants, save the seed from them. I've planted a few varieties of P som from seed companies and although the flowers were beautiful, I would only rate the potency (on a scale of 1-10) as being a two. For example, the Oase poppy offered by Park seed is beautiful, but the arrangement value left something to be desired in my opinion. Just not a high yielding variety, that's all. Spice rack seeds may be the same in one batch (a low-yielding variety), and the next batch depending on the source of the seed may be kick ass and a completely different variety. You just need to experiment and save some seed when you get good results.
~From Somni-Forum by Coda ~