Authorities were still considering Monday whether to file charges against a family in Winder after police found hundreds of opium poppy plants growing behind their house.
A Winder police officer investigating a hit-and-run accident Saturday stumbled upon about 900 of the poppy plants at the home on Northcrest Drive.
The family told investigators that an elderly relative who lives in the house was using the plants to self-medicate for an illness, said Winder police spokesman Chris Cooper.
"It is an Asian family, and this may very well have been a type of home remedy they were experimenting with, but obviously we have no laws in Georgia allowing for medicinal use of this substance," Cooper told the AJC.
"Our experience with this drug is fairly limited, and our ongoing investigation is partly being done to verify things like the quantity necessary to meet certain elements of our controlled substance laws here in Georgia as well as to learn more about the growth and uses of the raw plant in case we begin to see more of this type of activity," Cooper added.
Cooper said police are awaiting information from the GBI crime lab before proceeding with any charges.
"We are currently conferring with the Barrow County Crime Task Force, the Barrow County District Attorney’s Office and the GBI and hope to reach a decision on criminal charges by some time [Tuesday]," Cooper said.
The hit-and-run accident happened in the parking lot of Hill’s Ace Hardware store in Winder about 3:30 p.m. Saturday, according to Cooper. Witnesses gave police a tag number and a description of the car that allegedly left the scene.
The car tag led officers to the Northcrest Drive address. Officers questioned the homeowner about the accident, Cooper said, and the homeowner led officers to the rear of the home where a car matching the description given by witnesses was found parked behind the home.
While at the rear of the home, Winder Police Officer Dustin Kaster noticed a large quantity of an unusual plant growing all over the back of the property.
Kaster suspected the plant to be opium but wasn’t sure, Cooper said. He searched the Internet while at the scene and was able to identify the plant as an opium species.
One expert told the AJC that the plants are probably harmless.
"These poppies have been growing all over the Atlanta area for over 100 years," said Allen Sistrunk in an email. He was the director of gardens at the Atlanta History Center from 1980 to 1996, and now serves as Director of Mounts: The Palm Beach Botanical Garden.
"They are indeed Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy. They do not produce a quantity or quality of opium worth worrying about, because of our temperate climate," Sistrunk said.
"They are really only beautiful flowers that reseed themselves and come up in copious quantities each year. They were once used by our earliest settlers for babies’ teething pains. Really quite harmless."
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