Opium is largely used for manufacture of morphine, codeine, narcotine, laudenine, papaverine, and many other alkaloids. It is also the source of the toxic and extremely habitforming narcotic heroin or dimorphine, prohibited in some countries. Seeds contain no opium and are used extensively in baking and sprinkling on rolls and bread. Seeds are a good source of energy. They are also the source of a drying-oil, used for manufacture of paints, varnishes, and soaps, and in foods and salad dressing.
Oil cake is a good fodder for cattle.
Stems used for straw. Lecithin has been extracted from poppy seed meal. Seedlings are eaten as a potherb in Iran. As the peony flowered poppy, the opium poppy is widely grown as an ornamental, even here in the US, where it is illegal to grow. Folk Medicine Regarded as analgesic, anodyne, antitussive, aphrodisiac, astringent, bactericidal, calmative, carminative, demulcent, emollient, expectorant, hemostat, hypotensive, hypnotic, narcotic, nervine, sedative, sudorific, tonic, poppy has been used in folk remedies for asthma, bladder, bruises, cancer, catarrh, cold, colic, conjunctivitis, cough, diarrhea, dysentery, dysmenorrhea, enteritis, enterorrhagia, fever, flux, headache, hemicrania, hypertension, hypochondria, hysteria, inflammation, insomnia, leucorrhea, malaria, mania, melancholy, nausea, neuralgia, otitis, pertussis, prolapse, rectitis, rheumatism, snakebite, spasm, spermatorrhea, sprain, stomachache, swelling, toothache, tumor, ulcers, and warts.