Cultivation and Production. Opium poppies are grown by licensed farmers for pharmaceutical and food products. Culinary poppy seed brings farmers more profit than the sale of the low-alkaloid poppy straw. Other illicit cultivation of narcotic plants, primarily marijuana, is minor and has no significant impact on the United States. Drug Flow and Transit.
Turkey remains one of the major transit routes for the flow of Southwest Asian heroin to Europe.
There is little evidence that heroin from Turkey enters the United States, either directly or through another transit state. We continue to monitor the flow of heroin through Turkey for indications that it is becoming significant for the United States, but no such indications have appeared thus far. Heroin, and to a lesser degree, morphine base is smuggled through Turkey's eastern border. Morphine base is refined in illicit labs, most often in the rural Southeast or near Istanbul. Heroin is most commonly transferred to Europe hidden in containers on trucks.