I believe it's time for my semi-quarterly rant, and yes I've been saying the same thing for almost 15 years now. If it's surprising that I say this, I suggest going through my post history. I'm a broken record:
Sadly, this is what happens when vendors refer to these two plants in the same breath, plaster the words "Kava Bar" all over the building, sell them together, and speak about them as if they're the same. Now, this isn't every vendor, so I should be clear, but it's the vast majority of them.
If you're new, don't allow yourselves to be lied to. Only kava has thousands of years of safe use. Only kava has ceremonial consumption. Only kava originates from the South Pacific. Only kava is an FDA food and dietary supplement. Only kava is the cultural keystone species being sold.
The willful convolution of these two plants is only slightly infuriating, and by slightly I mean "extremely".
It seems some willfully ignorant vendors absolutely cannot refer to kava without also referring to the Indonesian/Thai herb which has absolutely nothing to do with kava in any way. These should NEVER be conflated. Vendors are using the name of kava to further the sales of the Indonesian herb on a scale that is embarrassing to say the least for kava, and the entire South Pacific.
Also, just because a plant is in the same family as another does NOT infer intrinsic safety. The "In the Coffee Family" bullshit needs to die.
There are plants that will straight up KILL YOU in the coffee family. In fact, there are plants that are very large issues for Brazil that kill thousands of livestock. This plant (Palicourea Marcgravii) is in the Rubiaceae family AKA "The Coffee Family". It contains MFA or monofluoroacetate. This compound interrupts the cellular respiratory cycle also known as the Krebs's cycle, and kills whatever living organism has consumed it (Ubiali et al. 2020).
This is what happens when a business calls themselves a "Kava Bar" and behaves like a "Head Shop".
The lawsuits are headed to them in the meantime. If these businesses keep doing what they're doing, no KCPA will protect them from legal responsibility when one of their consumers has a bad reaction to this non-FDA-approved, and non-regulated adulterant. If you're reading this thinking "that can't happen in my state". Wrong. They will take you to court in a state venue they have already stacked the courts against. Lawyers have already won over 11 million dollars, and don't plan on stopping any time soon.
Ubiali, Daniel G., Luiz Fernando C. G. Cardoso, Cássio A. Pires, and Franklin Riet-Correa. 2020. “Palicourea Marcgravii (Rubiaceae) Poisoning in Cattle Grazing in Brazil.”
Tropical Animal Health and Production 52 (6): 3527–35.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-020-02388-2.
