Indeed, making his food addictive was the goal of a Chinese restauranteur. As reported by The South China Morning Post:
A noodle shop owner was detained after he was discovered to have been adding parts of a poppy plant – from which opium is made – to food so that customers would keep coming back.
The noodle shop’s owner was held for questioning and confessed that he purchased 2kg of poppy shells (the bud of the plant in which poppy seeds are found) for 600 yuan (HK$756) in August.
He secretly added it to the food to lure in more customers.
The owner was detained for 10 days. Poppy shells used to be an ingredient in a popular hot pot sauce until the product was banned, according to previous reports.
So how did they bust him? Unfortunately, one man had to pay a pretty hefty price to get some justice (just some, not much). (Click on the link at the end of this post.)
The restaurant’s activities came to light after one customer, Liu Juyou, 26, tested positive during a routine urine test under an anti-drink-driving programme, the Xian Evening News reported on Tuesday.
He said he never touched illegal substances, so was shocked by the test result.
You don’t have to imagine what the cops said. “Yeah. Uh-huh. You’re innocent, just like everyone else in here.” Thing is, he was.
Liu was detained for 15 days from September 3, unable to convince police that the drug, he suspected, might have come from the food from a noodle shop he frequented.
Liu asked his family to help him test the theory, eating noodles at the restaurant and going home to take urine tests. When the relatives also tested positive for drugs, they alerted the police, who launched an investigation.