This Psychic Reading given by Edgar Cayce at his office, 322 Grafton Avenue, Dayton, Ohio, this 12th day of June, 1925, in accordance with request made by Mr. [195].

Present: Edgar Cayce; Gertrude Cayce, Conductor; Gladys Davis, Steno.

TEXT

1. GC: You will tell us if it is possible to make synthetic morphine; not a substitute but one that will exactly duplicate morphine in its action. If so, you will tell us how this may be made.
2. EC: There may be a substitute made synthetically. Not one with all the qualities or actions of morphine, though there are three distinct plants from which this may be made, not synthetically; those that partake of the properties of morphine as made from the Hop poppy. These we find grow in many climes; especially, though, the bean that grows in the valleys of the North Nile. This we find has all the qualities of the Hop poppy in action on the nervous systems of individuals. This, too, may be made from the Tarsius [?] Nocus [?], that grows in the plains in the South and West, or field poppy; gathered with the dew on same, when the pollen is just forming, before or after seeding, would prevent from obtaining, in distillation, the effect that is found from the Hop or poppy from which this is made.
3. We do not find a synthetic with all the properties. There must be the base for such properties, to have the same effect. In the same manner, in distillation, as the cocaine is made, may the morphine be made, or its substitute, yet without the full effects as seen in morphine. The manner in which the better substitute may be made is from the bloom, in the pollen stage, of the South and West field poppy, made or grown in this country. They change in color. Made in this manner:
4. Gather with the dew on same, when the pollen is forming on the blossoms, and then distill in pure water (distilled water). This would be clarified through the distillation, and with the evaporation, the crystal formation in sediment would then be redistilled, and the second sediment forming that white crystal that may be used instead of the morphine as prepared at present.
5. (Q) Will the action of this be the same as morphine?
   (A) The same, with the after effect and habit-forming properties.
6. That is all the questions.
7. Not necessary in the distillation to add any properties to this, other than with the water heated to temperature of the two hundred and eighty (280) degrees, and the distillation gathered through the form of the steam in the coil. Then this steam distilled a second time and allowing the crystals to form in sediment for use.
8. There must be the dew, and it must be at the stage when the pollen is forming, before it is seeded, and after the pollen is impregnated, which is in its first day's bloom - the next morning, then, gather.
9. (Q) What States can this be grown in successfully?
   (A) Southern Tennessee, north Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, northeastern portions of New Mexico. It grows wild in the field, changes in colors as seasons pass; the pink and red being that preferable.
10. (Q) By what name is it commonly known now?
    (A) Field daisy poppy. Not the daisy that grows in the daisy field, but poppy fields. We are through.

    Copy to Mr. [195]
    Copy to EC file

BACKGROUND

1. Previously Mr. [195] obtained Physical Rdgs., a Life Rdg., land investment rdgs., etc.
2. 6/07/25, Sunday, the following article in The New York Times, formed the basis for Mr. [195]'s request for a rdg. describing how to make synthetic morphine:
   METZ EXPLAINS REWARD FOR MORPHINE FORMULA
   CHEMIST THINKS THAT MAKING THE DRUG SYNTHETICALLY WOULD END POPPY GROWING AND OPIUM EVILS AND PREVENT WORLD STRIFE - $100,000 PRIZE FOR SCIENTISTS By Silas Bent.
   Herman A. Metz would fight fire with fire. He has offered a $100,000 reward to the discoverer of a commercial formula for synthetic morphine in the hope that opium, from which morphine is derived, will thus be removed from the field of international friction.
   The line of reasoning that prompted this offer is easy to follow. Poppies, from which opium is distilled, are grown chiefly in India. The British Government maintains an opium monopoly through which the drug is sold to unofficial distributers. To maintain an open opium market England on occasion has made war, and it was this interest that caused her to block the International Opium Conference at Geneva.
   But if morphine could be made in the laboratory more cheaply than it can be reduced from the poppy pod poppy-growing would no longer be profitable, the British opium monopoly would disappear and a contentious issue of international politics would be written off the books. This is Mr. Metz's reasoning.
   Several questions arise from this plan: What would be done with the formula for morphine? What would be the effect on the opium, morphine and heroin habits? Would moonshine morphine, contraband heroin and bootleggers in drugs spring up?
   Mr. Metz, who was formerly City Controller, is a chemist and inventor of some note. When I put these questions to him he explained at once that his plan looked first to the eliminating of opium from international politics rather than to the checking of the drug habit.
   ECONOMICS INVOLVED
   "This is primarily an economic problem," he said, "and my thought was to meet it economically. The suggestion really came from a speech by Dr. Carlton Simon, who as a special deputy police commissioner, is charged with suppressing the drug traffic in New York. He said that the discovery of a method of making morphine would be the best way of attacking the drug habit. If the immense agricultural and commercial interests which now cluster around the cultivation of the poppy could be wiped out, Great Britain would cease to stand in the way of international control of the traffic in morphine and opium. It is not generally understood that Great Britain could not suppress opium-growing in India without provoking a revolution.
   "We have an analogy in the case of indigo. When a synthetic formula was found in 1902 for a dye exactly like indigo, the cultivation of indigo ceased, for it was no longer profitable.
   "The first condition I made in regard to the $100,000 reward is that the discoverer must relinquish all rights to it and turn it over to the United States Government. The Government would permit manufacture of morphine for medicinal purposes under licenses, and supervise its distribution.
   "It is apparent, of course, that the discoverer of a formula for synthetic morphine could make far more money if he should patent the process and manufacture the drug himself, or sell it to a pharmaceutical manufacturer. He could make many times $100,000 in that way. But my hope is that by the assurance of a substantial reward I may stimulate the efforts of scientists, who would take a scientific rather than a sordid view of the problem.
   "There are many chemists in this country who would gladly turn over such a formula as a safeguard for the public health to the Government if they were sure of recompense from some other source for the labor, time and material they had put into their experiments.
   DIFFICULT BIT OF CHEMISTRY
   "The molecule of morphine is extremely complicated, and is not even yet known with certainty. A synthetic laboratory compound duplicating it would, of course, have the same physiological effect as morphine. It would be a narcotic, and probably it would be habit-forming. It would be as dangerous to health and morals, I suppose, as morphine is now. We have synthetic substitutes for cocaine, not precisely the same in atomic structure, which are not habit-forming; but my offer is for a synthetic drug exactly duplicating morphine, not a similar substance that will serve as a substitute. Only thus can we eradicate poppy-growing.
   "To say that anybody who had the formula could make synthetic morphine is preposterous. The process would require an elaborate equipment, and if the thing were to be done on a scale to make it cheap and profitable, there should be a large laboratory, with huge stocks of materials. It could not be done in a back room or a cellar.
   "There would be a period, I think, during which some persons would attempt to evade the law, just as they are now evading the law against the manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquor. There is, as a fact, an immense organized industry in the smuggling of opium and opium products, such as morphine and heroin. But if the issue were removed from international politics, so that the great countries of the world, including Great Britain, would cooperate in enforcing regulations against this international traffic, I am confident that in time it would die out, just as I am confident that as time goes on we shall see a stricter observance of the prohibitory laws against alcohol in this country.
   EXTENT OF DRUG ADDICTION
   "My motive in offering the reward is to stimulate research, in the hope of finding a synthetic equivalent of morphine, which is now the main item in the cargoes of international smugglers. Once we put the production of morphine on a commercial manufacturing basis, instead of an agricultural basis as at present, the Government of the world will be much better able to cope with the evil of drug addiction.
   "Nine-tenths of the dope fiends in this country, I am told, are criminals; and the estimates of the United States Health Service are that between 100,000 and 150,000 persons are drug addicts. If the manufacture of morphine is limited under Government licenses, the business will be fully controlled in time. The next generation will not fight it; the generation after that will forget it."
   China, for years the chief smoker of opium, is today the world's greatest user of morphine, and whatever morphine is used there for other than medical purposes is smuggled into the country. Opium - and in consequence morphine - is an item of international politics and a danger spot in foreign relations, because China no longer produces the drug, while India is the great centre of the poppy-growing industry. The phrase "British opium monopoly" is not mine. It recurs constantly in official British documents. The Blue Books issued by the British Government discuss it frankly and the Colonial Office has an Opium Administration.
   This situation which makes it difficult to deal with the international smuggling of opium. The first International Opium Conference under the auspices of the League of Nations was convened last November at Geneva. All the countries that still permit the smoking of opium were represented, and in the later sessions the United States was represented by a large delegation, which was hopeful that means might be devised of terminating its use. It failed to accomplish anything, because the British delegates blocked all efforts in that direction.
   THE OPIUM MONOPOLY
   Let us examine now one of the British Blue Books:
   "The opium revenue," it says, "is partly raised by a monopoly of the production of the drug in Bengal and the United Provinces, and partly by the levy of a duty on all opium imported from native states. The crop is grown under the control of a Government department, which arranges the total area which is to be placed under the crop with a view to the amount of opium required.
   "The cultivator of opium in these monopoly districts receives a license, and is granted advances to enable him toprepare land for the crop, and he is required to deliver the whole of the product at a fixed price to opium agents, by whom it is dispatched to the Government factories at Patna and Ghazipur.
   "The money advanced to the cultivator bears no interest. The British Indian Government lends money with out interest in no other cases. Producers of crops other than opium are obliged to get along without free money."
   When the opium has been manufactured - I am still taking my facts from official British sources - that part which is for consumption within India is turned over to Excise Department; and the "provision opium," which is to be exported to China, is sold at auction in Calcutta to the highest bidders among a crowd of Parsees, Mohammedans, Hindus and Asiatic Jews. It thus passes out of the hands of the British Government. The revenue to the government, from licenses, duties and auctions sales, has run as high as $22,000,000 a year.
   TONS OF DRUG SMUGGLED
   From the Statesman's Year Book we learn that the exports of opium from India to China were, until 1907, in Government hands. Then an arrangement was made to stop the exports when China should suppress the production of opium within her own borders. By 1916 there was no longer legalized governmental export of the drug between the two countries.
   It has been charged that persons in both Japan and the United States have assisted in the smuggling of morphine into China since it was made illegal. The traffic is now forbidden by international treaties, but tons of morphine, nevertheless, has gone from New York and from England to Japan and other Far Eastern points, and has been transshipped for smuggling into China. All these facts have been known for a long while, and are repeated here only as bearing on the proposal Mr. Metz has made that the problem shall be met on the economic basis by making the agricultural production of the drug unprofitable.
   There are those who say that opium smoking in moderation is not more harmful than tobacco smoking; there are even those who say that the use of morphine in moderation does no great harm to Orientals. In China, as a fact, the poppy has been known for twelve centuries and has been used medically for nine centuries. But is was not until the seventeenth century that the Dutch taught the Chinese how to smoke opium, and not until the eighteenth century that an imperial edict was issued against it.
   THE OPIUM WAR
   In 1839 a Chinese official seized 200 chests of the drug from British vessels and destroyed them; whereupon the British bombarded and took Canton, seized Chinese revenue ships on the Yangtse Kiang, and made war along the coast. When peace concluded "the Opium War." China surrendered to England the island of Hongkong, paid an indemnity of $21,000,000, and agreed to open up five treaty ports for trade, not only in opium but in other commodities also.
   Thereafter whole Chinese provinces diverted their rich river bottoms to the cultivation of the poppy, and China "rolled her own." After the agreement of 1907, however, the cultivation of the drug was made illegal, and was finally, in the course of ten years, stamped out completely. Travelers sometimes report that in Szechuan, a vast inner province of the country, small poppy fields have been seen; but certainly the plant is not cultivated to any appreciable extent. Whatever opium and whatever derivative drugs are sold nowa-days in China come originally from other lands.
   If morphine could be made in the laboratory more cheaply than from poppies, it might still be smuggled into China. Probably for a time it would be so smuggled. What Mr. Metz hopes to see is the removal of stumbling blocks to international regulation. He believes that when morphine is manufactured rather than grown the nations of the world will cooperate successfully to prevent illicit traffic in it.

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