Can eating poppy seeds cause a false positive drug test for heroin?
Eating poppy seeds cannot turn a drug test positive for heroin. However, poppy seeds do contain morphine. Therefore, eating poppy seeds (e.g., a poppy seed bagel) can result in a “true” positive result for opiates, more specifically, morphine. At the new cutoff levels required by the federal government in testing for opiates and the subsequent search for a metabolite that is exclusive to heroin called 6-acetylmorphine (6-AM) during the confirmation testing phase, it is very unlikely a false positive for heroin will occur.
