Botanists claim there 13 different native species of wild lettuce growing in the eastern US (not including several invasive species from Europe). I’ve only identified 11 of 13, an exercise in futility maybe, but I gave it a try. At the end of the day one might say there are only two wild lettuce groups, Blue lettuce and Yellow lettuce.
Blue and Yellow being the color of their blooms. Blue lettuces are closely related to the most common blue species, Lactuca floridana or Florida lettuce. The yellow lettuces also have most common species, Lactuca canadensis or Canadian lettuce.
Medicinally they are all the same. I know someone who makes a very mild pain reliever from it, little more than a sleep aid. It’s a stinky 3-day process, not a simple tea or tincture. However, it does have a place in an apothecary. It will help a few people in certain situations.
That said… all of the brew ha-ha… how all this started…
Out government just prior two WWII did research into
L. virosa because it expected its opium supplies to be cut off with the pending war. Two French scientists were employed, which made sense as that species is native to Europe and found rarely in the US and then only in isolated areas. They concluded that after a lot of hard collecting work the most the processed sap did was give one a good night's sleep and was not pain-killing at all.
Internet gossip about this original research is the source of the term “Natures Morphine”. Prior to the existence of forums folks used what were called bulletin boards on the net, this was late 80’s, early 90’s. Some unknown person somewhere started the rumor that lettuce was powerful and potent pain reliever. It’s not, plain and simple, never has been, never will be. For the last 30 years or so this rumor about lettuce spreads across the net from time to time. 99% of all I have read on the about lettuce on the net as a pain reliever is false.
There are some wonderful and very powerful non-addictive pain relievers made from plants. Almost all are made from extremely toxic plants, like water hemlock (used to execute Socrates), poison hemlock and yellow jasmine. All 3 plants will kill you in a very horrible, painful manner… if you don’t know what you are doing. I know what I’m doing and I still wear a respirator, eye protection and the heavy oven cleaning gloves.
After this there are no ibuprofen or any pain reliever that can be compared to a pharmaceutical medication. After this a certain plant only relieves a certain kind of pain. Even the original aspirin (from willow bark) only treats certain symptoms unlike pharmaceutical synthesized aspirin.
There are many other pain relievers made from less toxic plants that are situational. For instance, poke sallet. It’s an anti-inflammatory. It relieves pain by reducing inflammation. It too is a toxic plant, won’t kill but you might wish you were dead. Another in this category is Lobelia aka Puke weed. It’s toxic and relieves specific kinds of pain. If you take more than a couple of drops from a medicine dropper you are going to pray to the porcelain goddess for a couple of hours and wish you were dead, but it is very good with certain kinds of pain.
Lettuce is an edible plant, not toxic when very young. Edible plants make very mild pain relievers at best, except for one… I posted about it last Saturday… Solomon’s Seal, again, good for a specific kind of pain.
We play nice or not at all. 
