40,000 Opium Poppies Seized in National Forest
From Times Wire Reports
About 40,000 opium poppies were seized Thursday, the first time the drug-producing plants have been found in a national forest in California, officials said.
When officers arrived, three men dressed in camouflage fled into the forest, which borders the south side of Yosemite National Park. The men had been slashing pods on the plants to let the opium ooze out, said Sue Exline of the U.S. Forest Service.
The plants would have yielded about 40 pounds of raw opium, said Gordon Taylor of the Drug Enforcement Agency.
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