Around 215 restaurant outlets in China have been temporarily closed down after they were found to have been mixing poppies into soup or using them as seasoning.
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Narcotics police inspected 2,640 eateries in various cities in Guizhou, southwest China, and found 251 were illegally using poppy seeds or hull as ingredients, reported Xinhua News Agency. Of those, 215 were shut down, while 36 outlets were reprimanded for similar but less serious offences.
“Consuming soup or hot pots mixed with poppies for a long time will make you become addicted to such food and eventually lead you to drug abuse in serious cases,” Wei Tao, deputy chief of the Food Institute with Guizhou Provincial Center for Disease Control, was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
