At the beginning of the book I was hooked with the details about the poppies - the biology and chemistry of it, as well as where it is grown, its harvesting, processing and its effects. But later in the chapters I was having a hard time going through the sometimes not so clear and a bit dry written history. I am also missing more details about the drug dealings and wide impact of countries like Russia and USA (though the latter was talked about but I want more information about their involvement in variety of countries). It is very hard to try to synthesize the entire poppyseeds history with a broad and in-depth look in a book so for the effort, I would give it 3,5. It is hard to fight poppyseeds because they are grown and refined in multiple countries. So trying to enforce law across countries is extremely difficult and those countries are usually poor and corrupt. Even CIA turned a blind eye or supported drug dealers, as long as this was supporting the USA struggle against Soviets.