Rogers couple stressing dangers of poppy seeds

Legal, unwashed seeds killed son

WASHINGTON — The morphine that killed a young University of Arkansas graduate was sold without a prescription, legally, online.

Steve and Betty Hacala of Rogers say their son, Stephen Patrick Hacala Jr., ordered it on Amazon.com.

Tea, brewed with unwashed poppy seeds, claimed the life of the 24-year-old musician on April 3, 2016, in Fayetteville, according to an autopsy report.

Now his parents are in Washington urging officials to close a provision in the nation’s drug laws.

U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., gave a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday highlighting the problem. On Friday, the Hacalas are scheduled to meet with officials from the federal Food and Drug Administration to discuss the dangers associated with the substance.

“I don’t want any other parent … to ever go through the horrible pain and suffering that we’ve gone through,” Betty Hacala said Wednesday. “If I can save one life,

great. If I can save many, that’s a bonus for me. Our goal is to not let this happen to anyone else.”

Detectives who investigated the death found nothing sinister at the scene, just a 5-pound bag of poppy seeds. A water bottle three-fourths full of the seeds was also nearby.

An autopsy showed toxic levels of morphine in his blood.

Medical officials blamed the seeds.

The young man’s death, Cotton said, was “a terrible tragedy.”

“He had no drugs or paraphernalia in his apartment. No pill bottles, no needles, no nothing. He just was discovered dead after having drank this poppy seed tea,” the Republican from Dardanelle said.

Now, Cotton is urging federal officials to take steps to prevent future sales of unwashed poppy seeds.

“There’s no legitimate purposes on the market for unwashed poppy seeds,” he said.

A 2017 paper, written by Sam Houston State University graduate student Deborah Powers; Stephen Erickson, a medical examiner with the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory; and Sam Houston professor Madeleine J. Swortwood, describes the problem posed

by these unregulated opiates.

“The opium poppy and poppy straw are listed as Schedule II controlled substances in the United States, along with morphine and codeine. Opium poppy seeds are not currently scheduled. They are recognized as safe for human consumption by the FDA,” the three authors wrote for the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

While washed seeds are safe, unwashed seeds are often contaminated, coated with other substances, including morphine, codeine and thebaine, it states.

Unwashed seeds can be purchased “with no current legal repercussions or regulations,” the paper noted. But brewing poppy seed tea “can have fatal consequences.”

The Hacalas shared their story at a Little Rock roundtable discussion on opioids during the Easter recess.

“It’s the first I’d heard of it,” Cotton said Wednesday. “I told them I would do my best to try to address it.”

“The first thing we did was work with Amazon and also Walmart, the two online retail behemoths, to alert them of this dangerous gap in our nation’s drug laws to see if they could take voluntary action,” Cotton said. “They both agreed to remove from their sites all poppy seeds labeled as unwashed.”

Other websites continue

to sell poppy seeds labeled as “unwashed.”

And some of those lacking the unwashed label are also tainted, Cotton said.

“We are currently working with the federal regulatory agencies, like the [Drug Enforcement Administration] and the FDA and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy to try to close that gap,” Cotton said.

Unwashed poppy seeds illustrate “an obscure but dangerous gap in the nation’s drug laws,” Cotton added.

The new Amazon and Walmart sales policies are a direct result of the Hacalas’ activism, Cotton said.

“Betty and Steve are really the ones that made this change,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine the grief a parent feels when they lose a child and that could drive one to despair, but it drove Betty and Steve to action.”

The Hacalas expressed gratitude for the way Cotton and his office have responded.

While Stephen Hacala’s death brought his parents great pain, his life was a source of great joy, Steve Hacala said.

“He was a great young man who had a passion for life. He was an avid guitar player [who] just loved music, loved people. He was a wonderful son,” he said. “I feel blessed for every day that we had him.”