Source: San Diego UnionTribune
Pubdtade:Wednesday, June 11, 1997

Story about opium is banned in prison
ASSOCIATED PRESS

An article about opium poppies got Harper's magazine banned from a
federal prison in Florida.

The hightoned magazine's April cover story, "Opium, Made Easy,"
chronicles author Michael Pollan's passage from innocent gardener to
potential felon last summer as he learned how easily opium could be made
from poppies growing in his yard.

Pollan's piece explores the "high wall of misinformation and myth"
surrounding opium poppies and argues that the government wants to
control the supply of poppy information, not just poppies themselves.

"If opium is so easy to grow, and opium tea so easy to make, the best
perhaps the only way for the government to stop people from growing
and making their own is to convince them that it can't be done," Pollan
writes.

The article also reprints a poppytea recipe from Jim Hogshire's book
"Opium for the Masses," and that's what caught the eye of officials at
the Federal Prison Camp in Pensacola.

Warden Dennis Hasty withheld the Harper's issue from an inmate
subscriber, citing federal rules that let him reject a publication "if
it is determined detrimental to the security, good order, or discipline
of the institution or if it may facilitate criminal activity."

Harper's is appealing to the federal Bureau of Prisons, claiming the
First Amendment prohibits prison authorities from censoring publications
based on political content.

"This article is not even close to a howto manual, but rather (it) is a
very literary and humorous warning about the perils of poppy growing
with a pointed message about the war on drugs," Harper's said in its
appeal.