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Chilliwack Mounties have made the largest opium poppy plant bust in Canadian history Monday as they discovered a seven-acre field with as many as 60,000 plants.

When police arrived they found two men tending the fields. A 31-year-old Abbotsford man and a 24-year-old Mission man were arrested and are likely facing charges of production of a controlled substance, possession for the purpose of trafficking.

While opium can be used to produce heroin, police believe the plants were grown to produce doda, a powder that is combined with tea or hot water. The drink, which produces a quick high and a sense of well-being, is popular with certain South Asian communities.

Cpl. Kurt Bosnell with the RCMP's drug section said that after police learned of the field, they began investigating whether the plants grown were, in fact, opium poppies.

"There's very few instances where this has occurred in Canada before so it took some time in order to confirm exactly what it was," said Bosnell.

"One of the things that we were looking for was the presence of the opium flower. Once we started seeing these buds, they'll actually open up into nice bright pink and purple flowers."

The petals then fall off and what remains is a pod capsule that contains seeds, which can be ground up to create a fine opium powder.

"Once we were able to confirm there were opium poppies growing in the field, then we took some steps to gather the evidence and the grounds needed to get a search warrant for the field," continued Bosnell.

"Some pressure was put on us because we were trying to get to the field before the opium poppies were too mature. If we left it too long, we were going to run the risk of thousands of seeds from each pod capsule on the top of these opium poppies being spread not only within this field but . . . within other fields in the area."

RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Lea-Anne Dunlop said police have worked to try and ensure that the Chilliwack poppy crop is gone for good.

"What's going to be important now for this investigation is the eradication of the plants in the field and to ensure they're not going to come back," she said.

"We've also contracted out to a local farmer to till the field for us quite deep down to hopefully eradicate the crop that was growing in this field and hopefully that will be the end of this particular location."

Staff Sgt. Dave Goddard RCMP federal drug enforcement branch said that while the importing of doda is on the rise, this harvest may be the first of its kind in British Columbia.

"We're seeing more and more cases where doda is being imported into the country and purchased by consumers here locally. This is probably the first production of its kind that I have seen in British Columbia if not one of the first in Canada itself."

He said that the scale of the operation would have required the participation of multiple parties.

"In this part instance where you have acres upon acres of poppies being grown, this is obviously being done for commercial resale value. The people involved in this type of a grow have to have an organization behind them."

Goddard said that there must be the investors in the poppies, along with a group to co-ordinate the logistics of the operation, which would require large teams of harvesters and manufacturers..

"There has to be another group of individuals who are brought into harvest it," he said.

"This is obviously a significant case to the RCMP, one of which that will be looked at right across Canada. The fact of the matter is that I have never seen anything as large as this type of poppy production in British Columbia."

tolsen@chilliwacktimes.com