Opium

Opium is a resin extracted from the flowering plant Papeverum somniferum during certain stages of its cultivation. Crude opium can be smoked or eaten as a recreational drug, but is more commonly prepared into abusable pharmaceutical forms such as morphine or [[codeine], or the less medicinally used but more abused heroin. Other variants of the species are grown as ornamentals, or food flavorings, and even the opium poppy has a lovely flower.

Opium cultivation is a large part of the world's illicit drug trade.