[1] This species is grown to produce thebaine, which is commercially converted to codeine and semi-synthetic opiates including hydrocodone, hydromorphone, oxycodone, and oxymorphone.

[2] In the United States, domestic cultivation of P. bracteatum was proposed by president Richard Nixon's Office of Management and Budget in the early 1970s as an alternative to Turkish opium poppies, which the administration was attempting to eliminate.

This was because P. bracteatum does not contain morphine, which is converted to heroin, but is high in thebaine for legal codeine production, which was in crisis at the time because of the dwindling Turkish supply.

bracteatum and Papaver pseudo-orientale are thought to be the basis for up to 80 cultivars derived from cross-breeding and used extensively in ornamental gardens in Europe and the United States as well as elsewhere.

[citation needed] Papaver orientale 'Beauty of Livermere' is regarded as so similar to, if not identical with, the wild P. bracteatum that it may well be a strain of P. bracteatum or at the very least a complex hybrid derived from it in large part and is now also referred to as P. orientale 'Goliath Group'.