china.org.cn
Soup is good food

I love this one. You know how price wars work. One vendor drops their price on some commodity and before you know it every vendor is town is dropping theirs as well. In southwest China, the restaurant business upped the stakes and decided to add that little something to their soups and stews that will keep the patrons coming back -- opium.

Some 215 restaurants were shut down after narcotics officers discovered they were spiking the food with the poppies.

Dishes at the restaurants in Guizhou province contained varying degrees of the opium derivative morphine, the report said.

"Consuming soup or hot pots mixed with poppies for a long time will make you become addicted ... 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 as saying.

Nothing has been said about prosecutions but one wonders if there will be a protest raised by those patrons who got hooked on the food.

[Link via Jim at Vice Squad]