Poppy Scorer

Opium is collected from poppy plants in a labor-intensive process. Farmers use scrorers and other tools to etch lines into the plant’s pods by hand. Once scored, raw opium oozes from the pods which farmers collect and dry into opium gum. The gum is then bundled into bricks or cakes, wrapped in leaves or plastic, and sent to a refinery, where it is processed and packaged into morphine or heroin. This wooden scorer knife is from the Northern Helmand Province of Afghanistan, the country where most of the world’s illicit opium is grown.