I find it rather interesting that a community of people who are so dedicated to the pharmacological, cultural, and religious study of one 3,000 year-old ceremonial plant, can demonize all other ceremonially significant plants as “quasi-legal substances” which may “tarnish” or “taint” their favorite plant’s name. How quick some of us are to forget that it wasn’t long ago that most major herbal houses in the country refused to sell Kava, even after the ban was lifted, because they didn’t want the negative media coverage on Kava as a dangerous liver killer to taint and tarnish THEIR reputations as legitimate herb houses who sold safe herbs. Nearly every major herb house in the country gave into the pressure by the media and the FDA and stopped selling your favorite plant. Now, a few members of this community have taken this exact stance against other ethnomedicinal plants a decade later: Fearing that Kava’s reputation will be tainted if it is sold alongside other ethnomedincal plants simply because of FDA and media propaganda.
Meanwhile, I have been pre-emptively lobbying to keep kava legal. Perhaps you didn’t know that. I have been gaining support to form a Kava Association which would apply some ground rules to kava distribution, especially as it pertains to Kava Bars… being that I own one. Perhaps you didn’t know that either. Maybe you also didn’t know that I provide 200kg per month of various Kavas to 12 bars whom I have personally visited as a secret shopper to make sure that they are selling and marketing it in a responsible manner. As for the association, thus far I have the support of several of the suppliers that are supported by this community who have agreed that they will not supply irresponsible establishments. We have customs officers in Florida, as well as expert $400 per hour FDA attorneys who have pledged to support members who need advice as to how to market kava, or to defend them against bogus claims of damages. We also have journalists on hand whom I have personally showed the magic of kava and have subsequently agreed to pre-emptively write positive press about the Kava association and establishments that follow the responsible groundrules, which it looks like the community is already helping to determine:
http://kavalounge.yuku.com/topic/844/Kava-Laws-Regulations-s-needed-kava-resurgence#.URi5_Ge5-lY
As I read through this thread, I realized that perhaps a proper introduction is necessary for those of you who seem terribly unfamiliar with myself and my company and what it is that we stand for. My name is Tyler, I am the founder and CEO of KT Botanicals. Since 2005, I have fulfilled over 80,000 orders for rare, ethnomedicinal plant specimens, which would have otherwise been unobtainable through commercial herbal houses. I have traveled to 37 countries, and have spent, nearly 900 days away from the comforts of my home, searching for and acquiring promising new plants and re-discovering ancient ones.
I have been the distance with plants, cultures, and my own sanity over the years. I’ve built a business, a laboratory, two traditional medicinal retreat and detox centers and have done my travels all without a single dime of corporate or loaned funding. I am able to acquire, farm, and supply plant medicines, produce these extracts and isolates, conduct and fund important research, and lobby for culturally significant plants, from the funding that I receive from my loyal, core customer base, who can appreciate what goes into the type of work that I do and the positivity that comes from it. Regardless of the negative connotations that some of you tend to place on other culturally significant plants, know that I alone have opened the eyes and minds of 80,000 customers (and growing) to healing plants like Kava among others, to affect permanent and positive change in the hearts, minds and spirits of these individuals, while setting a positive example for the responsible and proper distribution of these plants.
I know of no other outlet for rare, medicinally or otherwise culturally significant plants that has maintained a strict legitimate research based marketing approach for these plants from the getgo and I date back to 2005 just as an internet operation, I began working with medicinals in 98. Nearly every other vendor, including some who have been around as long or longer than I have, have given way to the “legal high” mentality and affiliate marketing style distribution of these plants. Some have even pushed into headshop markets and we won’t even get into the K2 thing. Most outfits give histories, pharmacological properties, usage suggestions, and medical claims about their products, all of which are detrimental to the future legal status of ALL culturally significant plants given our current political and social climate.
As to the perceived “grey market” legality that some of you speak of, there isn’t any “grey market” its very black and white. I don’t sell ANY plants that are illegal. Period. I don’t market any legal plants in any manner that would make them illegal. Period. The line is crossed by marketing, and this goes for kava as well.
Understand that even the companies that you hold in such high esteem over me, are making health claims about Kava that the FDA considers DRUG CLAIMS - That is, claims which classify Kava as a therapeutic substance that is intended to treat, cure, mitigate diseases such as anxiety, insomnia, muscle spasms, back pain, etc.. The marketing of Kava or any plant using health claims changes kava from a plant into a drug in the eyes of the FDA and therefore makes it ILLEGAL to market or sell until a new drug application is submitted and sponsored clinical trials find the claims to be true. Without getting into an FDA regulatory lecture, I will sum it up briefly. It is in violation of the FDA to market and sell Kava if health claims are attached.
I make no claims for Kava or ANY of the plants that we distribute so as to keep the legal and regulatory status of Kava and other plants unrestricted. It is simply a matter of time before the FDA sees these sorts of claims and nails these companies for these claims. FDA even turned Cheerios and Blue Diamond almonds into drugs based upon their claims that they lowered cholesterol! Don’t believe me? Look it up!
http://www.fda.gov/iceci/enforcementactions/warningletters/ucm162943.htm I make 0 claims on Kava or any other plant because I know that it will only damage the regulatory status of the plant in the long run.
As to the misguided legal wonderings of my company, past, present, and future:
I have had FDA in my office for “check-ups” on our inventory and manufacturing facility...regularly since 2007.
I have had DEA audits of our entire inventory and labware… regularly since 2007.
These are excruciating 3 day audits, both for us and them. We’re on such good terms with the inspectors that we eat lunch with them and discuss the exact legal aspects of the entire operation. Its all smiles and handshakes because even the DEA and FDA recognize that we run a legitimate and fully compliant, tax paying outfit that has been by the book year after year.
I have been face to face with every alphabet agency that you can imagine and some that you can’t, fighting for the rights of individuals, like yourselves, to legitimately research culturally significant plants within the legal constraints of the law.
So if in turn, you will not support a company such as mine that actually spends a significant amount of time in the bush collecting and documenting culturally significant plants, marketing and distributing them in a responsible manner, and lobbies for your rights to research and continue to have access to these plants, then by default, you leave these plants in the hands of people who have far less noble intentions such as big pharma and legal high hawkers. Furthermore, to write myself and my company off as some legal high, quasi-legal, shady outfit that isn’t fit to sell this community kava, is to be severely misguided-To put it in polite terms. I have put in more time, love, and resources into the responsible distribution and research of these plants than most, and I have certainly earned enough stripes over the years to be recognized as a legitimate source for high quality Kava among other medicinals rather than be discussed in the same thread with bathsalts, schedule I production, and other baseless negative associations.
I hope that this clears up any confusion that you may have had about myself, my company, and my involvement within the ethnobotanical industry. I have a lot to offer the Kava community and expect nothing in return from any of you except for a tad bit more credit and respect that what I have discovered here.
Sincerely,
Tyler CEO
KTB
As a side note:
new2kava While I can appreciate your love for spiritual plants, your mis-recollection of us selling Yopo snuff, is entirely fictional. I have never sold ANYTHING as a “snuff” much less advised people specific instructions as to how to break the law with ANY of our products, period end of story. You clearly have my company confused with some other outfit. I’d like this rescinded from the record as it is utterly false. This sounds like something from BB Botanicals rather than us:
http://www.b*******b***botanicals.com/cebil-p-85.html#.URi5jme5-lY Lol Kambo sticks?! Really?! I have never sold a Kambo stick in my life. I've done Kambo. No Bueno. La purga.
If anyone else would like to jump on board with this negative groupthink and free associate about the disservice that I am doing for Kava and other medicinal plants, or just attack my character and intentions in general, I’ll go ahead and start it off. In the Ucayali region of Peru, we have a 200 acre medicinal retreat center which has cataloged over 600 medicinal plants by Latin, Shipibo and Conibo names along with their uses. There was a rumor in the neighboring villages that my partner and I were stealing the fat children from the villages and grinding them up for use as fuel for our generator. These people were dead serious about the allegations. My partner and I had to physically show up to the town meeting where this was being discussed, quite seriously I might add, and assure the villagers that we had done no such thing and that it was an ugly rumor. Reminds me of this thread a bit. Ha.
