“OXYCONTIN IS OUR TICKET TO THE MOON.” 1. The opium poppy is a beautiful flower with a long stalk. After it blooms, the petals fall away to reveal a pod the size of a small egg filled with a thick yellowish sap. And for thousands of years, that sap has been the object of human fascination—a chemical cornucopia, in the words of one historian, “containing sugars, proteins, ammonia, latex, gums, plant wax, fats, sulphuric and lactic acids, water, meconic acid, and a wide range of alkaloids.”
