Drugs: Just say "no"...

...to poppy seed cake.  (I'll get to that later.)

The UAE, like any society where religion has been permitted to weave its tentacles through all aspects of government, has an extensive list of "banned" things.

So I won't be bringing the following:

• The Book of Mormon (I have this because I'm still trying to figure out how those golden discs were lost)
  
• Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita
  
• Anaïs Nin's Little Birds
  
• Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion (actually, I am bringing this)
  
• my last bottle of codeine-laced French cough syrup
  
• and my poppy seeds
  

It's these last two items that I'll be talking about here.

Browse any UAE/Abu Dhabi/Dubai expat forum and you'll find numerous references to the UAE "banned" drugs list and scary news pieces about normal people being jailed for bringing their prescribed back pain medicine with them.  This write-up from the Gulf News Residents Guide is a bit easier to follow.  The items on this list aren't banned per se, they're controlled, just as they are in many other countries.  Go ahead -- walk into your local CVS pharmacy and ask for a bottle of Tylenol 3 or a bit of morphine if you don't believe me.  (Although if you're in the UK, that paracetamol-with-codeine mix can be had at any chemist sans prescription.)

From my perspective, there are two problems with the controlled substances list.  First, it contains a number of over-the-counter items readily available in most stores, like certain flavours of Robitussin and St. Joseph's cough and cold medicines.  Ok, fine.  It's the second problem -- the total ban on poppy seeds -- that I find idiotic.  Yes, I suppose one could, with enough poppy seeds of the right variety, start a little opium poppy garden in the middle of the desert (I myself prefer bougainvillea), but the seeds themselves apparently have no narcotic content because they only develop once the plant has lost its opium-producing potential.  (See this little horticultural excerpt.)  Nevertheless, you won't find poppy seeds in the baking aisle at Lulu's or Carrefour.  And I won't be bringing mine from home either.

Too bad, because I have an awesome recipe for poppy seed cake.