Saturday Night Wheeze from Topeka, Kansas • 13

1 tf (dl)'lnl yD (gMDIn) by DAVE HEARD 'H i 1 i i A If I jllV1 I banned They tried to teach us something else, but it didnt work. So we are back with the poppy. Abdullah politely refused to elaborate on how he disposed of his crop in the old days, or what his future plans are for it. The Tdrkish government has promised to control production so no Turkish opium becomes part of the worlds illegal drug traffic. But found it significant, reported our correspondent, that the elders of the village were carefully warning the young children about the evils of misusing the poppy.

There never has been any addiction in the area. The locals use the poppy to make cooking oil, animal feed and food flavoring after the opium has been removed. Turkish farmers have returned to their cen-turies-old practice of growing the deadly opium poppies. What 1 saw convinced me that smugglers are moving back into the area, one correspondent reports. And within a year, the heroin from the fields of Turkey will once again be on sale to addicts.

In the U.S. paid the Turkish government $35 million to curtail the growth of the poppy, which might as well be' Turkeys national flower. The money was to be distributed among the poppy farmers to compensate them for withholding the plant from their fields. But now the government is allowing the farmers to grow This seemingly harmless handful of poppy seeds may eventually cause the death of a junkie in New York The gum extracted from 'i the poppy again supposedly under control strict enough to prevent any Turkish opium from entering the worlds illegal drug traffic. Heroin is made from the opium.

In the village cf Suhut, not far from a town called Afyon, or opium, the correspondent spoke with a poppy farmer named Abdullah. Of course I am glad the government has lifted the ban, Abdullah declared. I am glad to be planting poppies again. I planted the other crops these past three years like they told me to, but nothing came up. We planted poppy seeds all our lives, then it was these pods can be converted nsfiona TOPEKA HOURS: i into heroin in illicit labs Injunction Highways 24 75 WEST TOPEKA, Kansas 6t604 I 8 8 $39.95 87411 club' chair i 87481 standard rocker $42.95 REPLACEMENT CUSHIONS FOR LOUNGE AND PATIO CHAIRS VVVV ViVAViNVtVAVtViVAVA1.