Unprocessed Poppy Seeds as CSA “Material”: Knowingly Supplying Seeds for Poppy-Seed-Tea Extraction Triggers § 843(a)(6)–(7) Liability

1. Introduction

United States v. McCarthy addresses a question at the intersection of lawful commerce and drug-law “precursor” liability: whether sellers of a non-controlled item—here, unprocessed poppy seeds—may be prosecuted under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) when they allegedly sell that item knowing it will be used to extract opioids into “poppy-seed tea.”

The defendants, Brandon and Rachel McCarthy, allegedly operated “Lone Goose Bakery,” an online business selling “unwashed,” “organic,” or “natural” poppy seeds coated with opium latex, and they allegedly marketed and instructed customers (via eBooks and videos) on making poppy-seed tea. A customer allegedly died after consuming tea made from the defendants’ seeds. A federal grand jury returned a 41-count superseding indictment. The district court dismissed the charges, accepting the view that the CSA’s explicit exclusion of “poppy seeds” from certain Schedule II definitions foreclosed prosecution.

On appeal, the government did not contest dismissal of counts premised on distributing the opioids themselves (morphine, codeine, thebaine), but it did challenge dismissal of counts alleging distribution/possession of a precursor under 21 U.S.C. § 843(a)(6) and (7). The Tenth Circuit reversed as to those precursor counts and remanded.

2. Summary of the Opinion

The Tenth Circuit held that the indictment sufficiently alleged offenses under 21 U.S.C. § 843(a)(6) and (7) because:

• Making poppy-seed tea by steeping unprocessed poppy seeds in water to separate out opium latex is “manufacture” under the CSA, because the statute defines manufacture to include “extraction from substances of natural origin.”
• Unprocessed poppy seeds can qualify as a “material” that “may be used to manufacture a controlled substance” within the ordinary meaning of “material” and the statutory context of § 843(a)(6)–(7).
• The CSA’s exclusion of poppy seeds from the Schedule II definitions of “opium poppy” and “poppy straw” does not create immunity from prosecution under the CSA’s precursor provisions, which hinge on knowledge/intent that the item will be used to manufacture controlled substances.
• Because the statutory language is unambiguous as applied, the defendants’ arguments based on lenity, constitutional avoidance, and vagueness failed.

The court also noted that reinstatement of a charged money-laundering conspiracy count (Count 20) should be addressed by the district court on remand.

3. Analysis

3.1 Precedents Cited

A. Standards of review and posture

• United States v. Todd, 446 F.3d 1062 (10th Cir. 2006): On review of an indictment dismissal, the court assumes indictment allegations are true. This posture matters because the appellate court did not resolve factual disputes (e.g., the amount of latex), but assessed whether the alleged facts fit the statutory elements.
• United States v. Wood, 6 F.3d 692 (10th Cir. 1993): Confirms de novo review for statutory construction—critical because the appeal turns on statutory meaning of “manufacture” and “material.”
• United States v. Quarrell, 310 F.3d 664 (10th Cir. 2002): Reiterates the interpretive starting point: the statutory text itself.

B. CSA scope and interpretive method

• Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005): Used for the general proposition that the CSA broadly prohibits manufacture/distribution/possession of controlled substances except as authorized. The citation frames § 843’s precursor provisions as part of the CSA’s broader regulatory mission.
• Digital Realty Tr., Inc. v. Somers, 583 U.S. 149 (2018): When Congress supplies a definition, courts must follow it even if it diverges from ordinary meaning. This is the fulcrum for the court’s rejection of defendants’ “common usage” arguments about “manufacture.”
• Encino Motorcars, LLC v. Navarro, 584 U.S. 79 (2018): If a term is undefined, courts give it its ordinary meaning—supporting dictionary-based interpretation of “extraction” and “material.”
• United States v. Theis, 853 F.3d 1178 (10th Cir. 2017): Words are interpreted in their specific and broader statutory context, reinforcing the idea that “material” in § 843 should be read in the context of the precursor scheme.

C. “Manufacture” by extraction: analogy and confirmation

• United States v. Beaulieu, 900 F.2d 1531 (10th Cir. 1990): The court treated “powdering out” amphetamine from ether—an extraction/separation step—as manufacturing. Beaulieu supplies a practical, circuit-level analogue: separating a controlled substance from a mixture can qualify as manufacture.
• United States v. Fields, 53 F.4th 1027 (6th Cir. 2022): Quoted for a common-usage description of manufacturing as creating a final product from components. The Tenth Circuit acknowledged the defendants’ reliance on this framing but held the CSA’s explicit definition controls.

D. Precursor liability despite lawful uses

• United States v. Truong, 425 F.3d 1282 (10th Cir. 2005): Central to the opinion’s policy logic: Congress can leave a product lawful for legitimate uses (pseudoephedrine) while criminalizing distribution/possession with actual knowledge/intent it will be used to manufacture controlled substances. The court uses Truong to normalize the statutory structure applied here: poppy seeds may be lawful generally but prosecutable as precursors when sold for opioid extraction.
• United States v. Walls, 293 F.3d 959 (6th Cir. 2002), and United States v. Venters, 539 F.3d 801 (7th Cir. 2008): Cited to illustrate that many ordinary items (chemicals/equipment) can be “precursors” even though not themselves scheduled controlled substances.

E. Indictment particularity

• United States v. Farr, 536 F.3d 1174 (10th Cir. 2008): When an indictment charges a crime in a particular fashion, those particulars delimit the charge. This mattered because the government argued poppy seeds could be an “equipment, chemical, product, or material,” but the indictment charged only “a material,” narrowing the appellate question to whether poppy seeds can be “material.”

F. Canons of construction invoked and cabined

• Yates v. United States, 574 U.S. 528 (2015): Used to explain noscitur a sociis (words in a list take meaning from their neighbors). The court found the canon unhelpful because the list structure and statutory history did not reveal a limiting “genus” that would exclude poppy seeds.
• Fischer v. United States, 603 U.S. 480 (2024): Used for ejusdem generis (a general term following specifics is limited by them). Again, the court found insufficiently coherent “genus” in the statute to narrow “material.”
• Ali v. Fed. Bureau of Prisons, 552 U.S. 214 (2008): “Any” is expansive; this supported reading “any … material” broadly.
• McDonnell v. United States, 579 U.S. 550 (2016); Stanley v. City of Sanford, 606 U.S. 46 (2025); U.S. Postal Serv. v. Konan, 146 S. Ct. 736 (2026); and Marx v. Gen. Revenue Corp., 668 F.3d 1174 (10th Cir. 2011), aff’d on other grounds, 568 U.S. 371 (2013): These authorities support a restrained use of the anti-surplusage canon and accept that Congress may draft with overlapping, belt-and-suspenders language—especially in broad regulatory schemes like the CSA.

G. Lenity, avoidance, and vagueness

• United States v. Davis, 588 U.S. 445 (2019): Provides the lenity principle and the constitutional-avoidance framing—both of which require genuine ambiguity before they operate.
• United States v. Lesh, 107 F.4th 1239 (10th Cir. 2024): Supplies modern Tenth Circuit vagueness standards (fair notice and arbitrary enforcement).
• United States v. Baldwin, 745 F.3d 1027 (10th Cir. 2014): Reinforces that vagueness is assessed as applied to the defendants’ conduct, not hypothetical edge cases.

3.2 Legal Reasoning

A. The court’s core move: use the CSA’s definitions, not everyday intuition

The defendants’ central contention was intuitive: if opioids already exist on the seeds as residue, steeping them in water “merely removes” what is already there and therefore should not qualify as “manufacturing.” The court rejected that intuition because the CSA itself defines “manufacture” in 21 U.S.C. § 802(15) to include “production, preparation, … processing … either directly or indirectly or by extraction from substances of natural origin.”

Once “manufacture” is anchored to “extraction,” the factual allegations about poppy-seed tea (steeping large quantities of seeds to “remove the opium latex” and yield a liquid containing morphine, codeine, and thebaine) fit the statutory definition with little interpretive strain.

B. “Extraction” and “infusion”: dictionary meaning plus indictment allegations

With “extraction” undefined in the CSA, the court used ordinary-meaning sources (Oxford English Dictionary) to connect steeping/infusion to extraction. This matters doctrinally: it treats a common kitchen-like method (steeping) as an “extraction” method, so long as the process obtains constituent elements (here, opioids) from a natural-origin substance (seed/latex coating).

C. “Material” is broad; statutory context does not narrow it

The court gave “material” its ordinary breadth—“matter” or a “substance” from which a thing may be made—and held there was “no reason to exclude poppy seeds” from that meaning. The defendants tried to narrow “material” through interpretive canons, but the court found:

• In pari materia did not help because the Schedule II definitional exclusion of “seed” from “opium poppy” and “poppy straw” speaks to what is scheduled as a controlled substance, not to what may be a precursor “material” when sold with mens rea to enable manufacturing.
• Noscitur a sociis and ejusdem generis did not apply cleanly because § 843(a)(6)–(7) contains (as the court explained via statutory history) both a cluster of specific lab/production items and then a separate set of broad catch-all terms added later (“equipment, chemical, product, or material”). The court declined to invent a unifying “genus” that would exclude naturally occurring substances—especially given § 802(15)’s explicit inclusion of extraction from natural origin.
• Surplusage concerns were insufficient to overcome the natural breadth of “any … material,” because Congress may use overlapping terms to ensure coverage.

D. Mens rea does the limiting work the defendants sought from textual narrowing

A key structural point is that § 843(a)(6) and (7) do not criminalize possession or distribution of “material” in the abstract. Liability attaches only if the defendant acts “knowing, intending, or having reasonable cause to believe” the material will be used to manufacture controlled substances. This mens rea requirement is the court’s answer to the “everything becomes illegal” parade of horribles.

E. Lenity, avoidance, and vagueness fail because the statute is clear as applied

The defendants argued (i) ambiguity triggers United States v. Davis lenity/avoidance, and (ii) the government’s reading makes the statute vague because it could sweep in spoons/syringes, provides no line between processed/unprocessed seeds, and is “misleading” given the Schedule II seed exclusion.

The court’s response is doctrinally orthodox and fact-specific:

• No ambiguity remains after applying § 802(15)’s definition of manufacture and ordinary meaning of “material,” so lenity and avoidance do not apply.
• Under United States v. Baldwin, vagueness must be assessed as applied; the indictment alleged enough latex to yield controlled substances, and the alleged manufacturing method fits “extraction.” Hypotheticals about spoons/syringes do not control.
• The Schedule II definitional exclusion does not create a “safe harbor” against a different statutory prohibition aimed at precursor conduct with culpable mental state.

3.3 Impact

A. A clarified enforcement pathway for “lawful goods” marketed for drug extraction

The opinion strengthens prosecutors’ ability—at least in the Tenth Circuit—to proceed under § 843(a)(6)–(7) where a defendant sells a generally lawful commodity while allegedly:

• supplying it in a form particularly suited to extraction (e.g., “unprocessed” with residue), and
• marketing, instructing, or otherwise evidencing knowledge/intent that buyers will extract controlled substances.

This is not limited to poppy seeds; the court’s reasoning fits a broader template already familiar from pseudoephedrine cases (as reflected in United States v. Truong), but it extends the logic to an item expressly excluded from certain Schedule II definitions.

B. “Extraction” is not confined to laboratory sophistication

By tying “manufacture” to “extraction” and equating steeping/infusion with extraction, the court implicitly rejects any notion that “manufacture” requires industrial methods. Future cases involving home or small-scale extraction processes may cite McCarthy to establish that “kitchen chemistry” can still be “manufacture” if it extracts controlled substances from natural-origin material.

C. The Schedule II seed exclusion is not a categorical shield

The court’s in pari materia analysis signals an important boundary: an express definitional exclusion in the scheduling provisions does not automatically immunize conduct that independently violates precursor provisions with a separate mens rea element. Defendants in future cases will likely need to focus on (i) whether the item truly “may be used” to manufacture and (ii) whether the government can prove the defendant’s knowledge/intent/reasonable-cause-to-believe.

D. Litigation consequences on remand (including ancillary charges)

The court reinstated the precursor-based dismissal in part and remanded, leaving Count 20 (money-laundering conspiracy) to the district court to reassess in light of reinstated predicate conduct. Practically, this underscores how revival of drug-precursor counts can revive or reshape financial-crime exposure tied to proceeds.

4. Complex Concepts Simplified

• Controlled substance vs. precursor offense: A controlled substance offense criminalizes handling the drug itself (e.g., morphine). A precursor offense (here, § 843(a)(6)–(7)) criminalizes handling an item that can be used to make a drug, but only when the defendant has the required guilty knowledge/intent about that use.
• “Manufacture” under the CSA: In ordinary speech, “manufacture” may sound like factory production. Under the CSA, it expressly includes “extraction” from natural sources—so separating a drug out of a plant-derived substance can count.
• “Extraction” (as used here): The court treated “steeping in water to draw out constituents” as extraction. So, making a liquid by soaking seeds to pull opioid residue into the water fits.
• Interpretive canons (noscitur a sociis / ejusdem generis): These are rules of thumb that sometimes narrow broad words by their neighbors in a list. The court refused to use them here because the statute’s list and history did not show a clear limiting category.
• Rule of lenity: If a criminal law is genuinely ambiguous after normal interpretive tools, courts may choose the narrower reading favoring defendants. The court held there was no such ambiguity here.
• Vagueness (as-applied): A law is void for vagueness if it fails to give fair notice or invites arbitrary enforcement. But courts usually test this against the defendant’s actual alleged conduct, not hypothetical scenarios.

5. Conclusion

United States v. McCarthy establishes a clear Tenth Circuit rule: unprocessed poppy seeds, though excluded from certain Schedule II definitions, may still be a § 843 “material” when sold or possessed with the requisite culpable mental state, because making poppy-seed tea by steeping seeds to draw out opioids is “manufacture” through “extraction from substances of natural origin” under 21 U.S.C. § 802(15).

The decision is significant less for its treatment of poppy seeds in isolation and more for its reinforcement of a broader CSA architecture: Congress can leave commonplace items lawful for ordinary purposes while criminalizing their distribution/possession when paired with knowledge or intent to facilitate drug production—even when “production” consists of low-tech extraction.