Various health and yoga Web sites claim that iceberg lettuce contains chemicals similar to laudanum, morphine, or other opiates. There are also reports of people being admitted to hospitals after injecting themselves with lettuce extracts and papers about smoking lettuce. I have found no information about the chemical constitution of lettuce that mentions morphine or opiates. Are there such things in supermarket lettuce? –Curious Lettuce Eater, via e-mail
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When cut, the stems of lettuce plants ooze a milky juice whose appearance, taste, and smell are said to be similar to opium. Once dried, the substance is called lactucarium, or lettuce opium. Used by the ancient Egyptians, the stuff was listed in the Pharmacopeia of the United States of America as late as 1916. It can still be found in herbals and such, which describe it as a sedative and cough suppressant. Lettuce opium can be found in all lettuce species but is most commonly extracted from wild lettuce, Lactuca virosa.
Recent writers generally don’t think much of lettuce. Tyler’s Honest Herbal (1999) calls lettuce opium a “venerable fraud of a drug.” The authors say it was popular in the U.S. during the 19th century but sank into obscurity in the 20th. In the mid-1970s, lettuce opium “was resurrected as a legal psychotropic or mind-altering drug by members of the American hippie movement”; one dealer reportedly cleared $1,500 daily selling lettuce products, which any way you look at it is a lot of lettuce.
