Retired teacher plants poppies as veggies

A retired teacher in southwestern Guizhou Province was sentenced to one year in jail for growing poppies in his yard, Guiyang Evening News reported today.

The convict surnamed Hu planted poppies as a vegetable in his small yard of about a dozen square meters in Dafang County early this year. He tasted the herb before and liked the taste, the paper said.

Police discovered the banned plant in early March and found 1,709 poppies in his yard. According to the Chinese law, an individual who grows 500 to 3,000 poppies will get a jail sentence of no more than five years.

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