Six Israeli soldiers fail surprise drug test after eating cake
By Associated Press January 2, 2006
Six Israeli soldiers figured the drug tests they took as part of the Israeli army's weeklong project against drug use were just routine.
Until they flunked.
The Israeli army soldiers' weekly Bamahane reports in its current issue that the six were swept up in a dragnet of testing carried out by military police at a training base in the center of the country. The trouble started when their urine samples came back positive for opium.
For six hours the soldiers - four men and two women - faced interrogation, insisting they were clean, that they didn't use drugs.
Then the truth emerged. One of the desserts at the base lunch that day was poppy seed cake. Opium is made from poppy seeds - and the cake triggered the positive tests.
The soldiers were released and sent back to their base.
The military police were not quick to admit the mixup. The weekly reported that all the police would say was that the samples "were sent to a lab, which did not conclusively prove drug use."
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