While investigating a hit-and-run accident, Winder, Ga., police discovered about 900 opium poppy plants growing behind a home, officials said.
The hit-and-run happened in a parking lot outside a local hardware store Saturday afternoon, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Witnesses to the traffic accident gave police the license number and a description of the car that fled the scene, which led police to the address the car was registered to, police spokesman Chris Cooper said.
Once there, police officers questioned the homeowner, who took them to the rear of the home where the car was found, Cooper said.
While behind the house, Winder police officer Dustin Kaster noticed a large amount of an unusual plant he suspected to be opium, Cooper said. He did a quick Internet search while at the scene, which confirmed his suspicion.
Police detained several residents of the home and were investigating further to determine if criminal charges are warranted.
The residents told police the plants were brought in from overseas and were used by an elderly person living the home for medicinal purposes, Cooper said.
One expert said the plants are harmless.
"These poppies having been growing all over the Atlanta for over 100 years," said Allen Sistrunk, former director of the Gardens at the Atlanta History Center and current director of the Palm Beach Botanical Garden.
"They are indeed Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy. They do not produce a quantity or quality of opium worth worrying about, because of our temperate climate," Sistrunk said. "They are really only beautiful flowers that reseed themselves and come up in copious quantities each year. They were once used by our earliest settlers for babies' teething pains. Really quite harmless."
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