Poppy Seed Case Ends Happily, But That’s Not The End Of It Certain Species Are Still Classified Under Law As Controlled Substances

The case was enough to set any garden club atwitter. A Seattle man, Jim Hogshire, had been charged with possessing flowers.

Well, not just any flowers; a police raid on his apartment turned up dried poppy pods, and poppies of a certain species are classified under federal law as controlled substances because they can be used to produce opium.

But what turned Hogshire’s case into a celebrated cause, one that prompted a cover article in last month’s Harper’s magazine and public support from national drug policy reformers, was that the pods he had could be bought in most any florist’s shop or craft store, where they are sold for dried flower arrangements.

Hogshire’s arrest, in March 1996, raised the issue that all those poppy growers and sellers are technically flouting the law; and though the police are extremely unlikely to crack down, they would be within the law if they did.

Last week, the case ended well for the defendant. Hogshire, 39, who originally faced felony charges that could have sent him to prison for years, went free Thursday after a plea-bargain in King County Superior Court that reduced the charge against him to a nondrug misdemeanor and required him to pay $100, serve 100 hours of community service time and remain on probation for a year. The poppy charge itself was dropped, but lawyers involved in the case said that did not mean that it could not be invoked in another instance.

“These poppies are everywhere but everyone who’s got them is potentially a felon,” said Tim Ford, Hogshire’s lawyer. Ford added, however, that it was virtually unheard of for anyone to be arrested for simple poppy possession without an effort to manufacture opiates.

The rarity of poppy prosecution is the other reason Hogshire’s case attracted attention: he and his lawyer argued that he was singled out for arrest because he had written extensively on illicit drugs.

He wrote a book called “Opium for the Masses” (Loompanics Unlimited, 1994), which includes how-to sections on producing and ingesting opium, and publishes a small-circulation magazine called Pills-a-Go-Go, which covers pharmaceuticals and includes features like a description of the effects of taking massive doses of cough syrups.

The police based their search warrant in part on those writings. And one officer asked, “‘With what you write, weren’t you expecting this?,”’ Hogshire said.

“What happened to me was designed to silence me,” he said, “and to some extent it did a good job of that because for the next year or more I was wrapped up with this case.”

Gary Ernsdorff, the King County deputy prosecuting attorney who took over Hogshire’s case after the charges were filed, said that Hogshire’s writings were certainly not the reason he was arrested but that it did influence prosecutors.

“They obviously showed that he wasn’t a mere gardener,” Ernsdorff said, “but as far as elevating him to some special status where we pursued charges against him, I would say no.” Rather, he said, “it was more of a public safety issue.”

Police found several legally registered weapons in Hogshire’s apartment, along with what they described as a Thermit grenade but what Hogshire said was merely for fireworks.

The charge he ultimately pleaded to was for “attempted possession of an improvised device,” which usually refers to homemade bombs. Ernsdorff said the county had agreed to the plea bargain because it anticipated problems proving that the pods Hogshire possessed were indeed of the illegal variety and that the improvised device had been meant for ill-use.