Kava and liver toxicity: the truth about kava's murky past

In the summer of 2018 I was working from a coffee shop, surfing through some nerdy journals, when I came across an odd directive from a regulatory agency that didn’t make sense to me. Being a university researcher in my past life, I was trained that if something didn’t make sense, to follow the trail of breadcrumbs.

So I requested all related research articles pertaining to this decision and started mapping out the timeline of the events which lead to it, hopefully to outline the rationale behind the mandate.

What started as a casual afternoon of curiosity turned into a complete obsession. I dove deep into it, researching for months, almost forgetting most responsibilities that had to do with growing our own kava company because I was so determined to get to the bottom of it all.

Throughout my research I discovered something about this kava industry, something that was often told to me as a rumor, but I never was given any actual proof of it. But one by one over the weeks that followed, the evidence began to emerge.

And trust me, you won’t believe it.

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Does kava cause liver damage? How the scare started

The result of all this research was a big blog post I wrote labeled “The Great Kava Scare”, which was pages and pages long set to go live across all of our social media channels, explaining the events of what happened, the facts behind many of the health claims,

but I never published it... Because I was a coward. I was scared. I was scared about the consequences it would have on me and my family.

It’s March 2025 right now and a lot has changed. It took me almost 7 years of on and off introspection and hesitation, to get the courage to speak about this publicly. To my knowledge, no one else has come forward to shed light on the specific aspects of this narrative regarding kava’s murky past.

Honestly, I’m still a little worried to share this as the more I look into it the more I’m continuing to earth possible ties to the most powerful groups in the world. All of which obviously, would not enjoy me voicing my opinion.

However recently there have been a number of popular documentaries, and outspoken voices critiquing these industries, and all of the directors and writers, while receiving some beatings through the press, are still alive, so I’m feeling a bit more comfortable being outspoken with it. But if something happens to me, you will know why.

So the most common questions we get are regarding kava and the liver. It’s been about 22 and a half years after the worldwide kava ban, which is what led to all these misnomers regarding liver cases with kava.

When we first started this project in 2015 of making kava accessible to everyone, I used to believe kava had a bad rep with the liver because people were using kava extracts as well as low quality kava, and the extraction processes brings out cytotoxic chemicals that make end product dangerous to your liver.

Chemicals which are types of chalcones which are native to the kava plant known as flavokavains. Chalcones are natural compounds found in plants which serve as key building blocks for biological molecules.

Kava’s chalcones usually stay in the root that you filter out when making a kava beverage (which is why you’re not supposed to actually ingest kava’s roots), but they tend to be pulled out in high concentrations when making kava extracts. And while there is still some truth to these claims, the vast amount of evidence points actually in another direction entirely.

Long story short, I’m pretty sure I was wrong and I deeply apologize to anyone I have steered the wrong way.

First off, a quick disclaimer. I’m not a medically trained physician so please do not substitute this for medical advice. Any and all statements in here are opinions of my own and do not reflect drinkroot, the team or any establishments we support. These are just my opinions.

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Why medicinal plants threatened a trillion-dollar industry

In the late 1990s, kava—a ceremonial drink native to the tribes of the South Pacific—was discovered to have a remarkable ability to ease anxiety disorders. But this was hardly the first time an ancient plant was found to possess profound healing properties.

Throughout history, humanity has often turned to the natural world for remedies, and ancient plants, in particular, have repeatedly revealed themselves as real sources of profound healing.

As Bijana Petrovska wrote in Pharmacognosy, “Healing with medicinal plants is as old as mankind itself…. Ever since ancient times, in search for rescue from their disease, people looked for drugs in nature.” And this relationship between humans and plant-based medicine stretches back farther than most realize.

The ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia—widely regarded as the first true civilization—left behind detailed records of medicinal recipes dating back 5,000 years.

And science has shown the concoctions were not mere folklore but thoroughly tested and meticulously crafted formulas, documenting the therapeutic use of plants long before modern pharmacology existed.

The Ebers Papyrus scrolls found in Egypt contain over 700 remedies dating back over 3500 years.

The Pen T’Sao, written by Emperor Shen Nung in 2500 BC, cataloged 365 medicinal plants for eastern medicines, many of which are still integral to traditional Chinese medicine today.

The Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Ancient Indian Rig Veda’s, Ancient Greek and Romans, Mayans, Aztec, Incan, Islamic and more all turned to the diversity and richness of ancient medicinal plant pharmacon. Many of which led to the development of modern (patentable) pharmaceuticals.

When I was a kid, pharmaceutical companies reigned supreme. Not necessarily king in raw power as one could argue they are even more powerful today, but more so in their perceived authority.

Doctors, pharmacists, and medical institutions were trusted back then, without question.

The prevailing belief was that these experts knew what was best for us—better than we could ever know ourselves. And for the most part it was true.

We as human beings often lacked the critical thinking abilities to isolate many exterior variables in our own lives which could lead to disease, and we also lacked access to the critical data to make informed decisions on our own health.

In the 90’s, When a prescription was handed to anyone in my immediate or extended family, we took it without hesitation, confident in the system that governed our health.

But also in the late ’90s, I recall vivid conversations of another path. Family members and friends spoke of Asian herbal remedies, purchased from shadowy backroom markets.

I remember plastic bags filled with dried roots, barks, and herbs, tagged with caricatures I could not understand.

And I remember the pungent aroma of black, sludgy brews simmering in foil wrapped kitchens.

I remember the stench burning your nostrils and the acrid bitter taste encompassing your mouth as you struggled to hold down whatever Mrs Chen had given you.

God forbid you complain, or worse cough up the liquid gold to catch a verbal beating of a lifetime from a true tiger mom.

Even as kids, we learned there are certain mistakes you should only make once.

I remember hearing of acupuncture needles, cupping, herbs, energy healing, and sauna therapy, long before the world’s top coaches were prescribing them to their olympic athletes.

Back then, these were just our asian parents strange pseudo-therapies, which we also learned to never utter about in public..

I was naive. But not anymore.

Because as I’ve learned overtime,, many synthetic drugs are merely derivatives of the native plant medicines they replaced.

And often, these natural forms not only work just as well—sometimes, they work better.

They often provide a more balanced holistic healing without the long list of side effects in fine print.

Modern science of synthetic derivatives, like any tool, is only as pure as the hands that wield it. And one can argue right now the hands may be a little dirty, because when profit becomes the guiding force, things can be easily manipulated.

But if we do not defend what is right, we forfeit the very core of our values.

And if we do not stand by our values, we surrender the complete essence of who we are.

Human beings exercising our own choices to live freely.

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How the pharmaceutical industry became so powerful

Nowhere is this battle of humanity more evident than in the often covered up story of how the pharmaceutical industry rose to build trillion-dollar empires. And, my friends, that story can be traced back to a long and deliberate sequence of events surrounding the evolution of our modern mental health crisis.

We are about to delve into a brief history marking the biggest breakthroughs (and cash cows) of some of the world’s most powerful companies in the world. This exploration is crucial to understanding the story of kava—what happened to it, and why—but also serves as a cautionary tale, a reminder of how those in power may have manipulated the threads of time for their own gain. It reveals how simple truths can be obscured with a simple sleight of hand covered by a cloud of medical jargon.

Most importantly, it underscores that this manipulation is not a relic of the past— but it continues to shape our modern world today.

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From opium to benzodiazepines: the safer alternative cycle

In the late 1700’s, Britain suffered a massive loss of its exportable tea revenues thanks to the American Revolution cutting off trade access. However, Britain still had well-established trade routes with China. To make use of these routes and make back their losses, Britain had the idea of growing opium in India and selling it to the east.

Opium was massively marketed as a cure-all—headaches, insomnia, diarrhea, cholera, toothaches, even stomach pain. No prescription needed. This of course led to widespread addiction in China and by the 1800’s opium addiction reached catastrophic levels. As the Chinese government recognized the invasive poppy’s devastating grip on society, they sought to sever the supply chain.

But Britain, profiting immensely from the trade, fought back. This led to the famous Opium Wars between Britain and China. Which China eventually lost, which led to Britain imposing a series of unequal treaties that ensured their control over the lucrative market, securing their ability to keep China’s massive population dependent and the money flowing westward.

There is a morbid irony in today’s day and age as we see a similar story unfolding—with fentanyl constituents being manufactured in the east and flooding into Western nations. But that’s a story for another day.

An opium fantasy

Soft hangs the opiate in the brain,

And lulling soothes the edge of pain,

Till hashest sound, far off or near,

Sings floating in it’s mellow sphere.

While opium addiction ravaged China, the use was not just isolated to the east, but was also growing in other established western areas.

A common family story is a 12-year-old boy strolling into a pharmacy to purchase a bottle of opium a doctor recommended for their mother’s headache, and three years later, the mother still be stuck using it daily just to feel normal. At the time, the United States was largely preoccupied with westward expansion, fighting tribal wars, and agriculture — at least until a new star was born. Friedrich Wilhelm Sertürner

When Friedrich was 23 years old, he was an apprentice to a pharmacy in Einback Germany. It was here in 1805 where he successfully isolated the first plant alkaloid from opium, and consequently fed it to a nearby dog. The animal fell immediately into a deep sleep. He named this new compound morphine, named after Morpheus, the Greek God of Dreams. (Early Drug discovery and The Rise of The Pharmaceutical Industry - Alan Wayne Jones.).

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Morphine: The Safer and Nonaddictive Alternative to Opium

Physicians hailed morphine as a non-addictive, safer alternative to opium, and it was widely administered during the American Civil War. But it wasn’t long before significant cases of “soldier disease” became rampant, which is a euphemism for morphine addiction.

Then in 1874, Felix Hoffman at Bayer Pharmaceuticals synthesized another even better variant of morphine—one that wouldn’t carry the same “bad reputation.” His team synthesizing this compound taught doctors and pharmacists to sell the drug as a safer, non-addictive alternative to morphine.

They called this wonder drug, heroin.

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Heroin: The Safer and Nonaddictive Alternative to Morphine

Heroin was also offered over the counter without prescriptions in a very similar manner as opium. It was marketed as an over-the-counter miracle drug. It was typically used in the same manner as Laudanum (a popular opium tincture) and was commonly used as an over the counter medicine for children's cough. This of course led to a widespread addiction epidemic for a couple decades along with various social and physical health issues. Heroin still remains to be a large problem in the west to this day.

Nearly two decades after heroin’s debut and right as sales began to fall,, big pharma introduced another so-called solution.. This time, the compound had been synthesized years earlier by Adolf von Baeyer. A said to be, safer and nonaddictive alternative to Heroin

He called it, Barbituric acid, or coloquially known as “barbituates”.

This was the first, fully synthetic tranquilizer, and was supposedly named after a lady Barbara that von Baeyer was dating at the time.

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Barbiturates: The Safer and Nonaddictive Alternative to Heroin

Once again, doctors and pharmacists were instructed to market barbiturates as a safer alternative to their predecessor—heroin. Once again, the risks were downplayed.

The 1930s, marked by the Great Depression, saw an explosion in barbiturate use. Millions of Americans turned to buy these over the counter sedatives to “take the edge off.” Though barbiturates weren’t derived from opium, they worked similarly—depressing the central nervous system to reduce brain activity.

By the time the U.S. entered World War II, Americans were consuming over one billion barbiturates per year. But unlike morphine, heroin, or opium, barbiturates had an alarmingly narrow margin between a therapeutic dose and a lethal dose. In fact, around one in ten overdoses resulted in death, a number that skyrocketed when mixed with alcohol.

Legendary musician Jimi Hendrix was a victim to this tragic combination. Famous artist Elvis Presley died from it. Anna Nicole Smith, Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe and many, many more. The thin line between therapeutic and lethal doses of barbiturates is so pronounced, it may surprise you to know that pentothal, a common barbiturate, was later selected as the primary drug used in lethal injections for the death penalty—a practice that actually continues today.

By 1951, Congress intervened, making barbiturates prescription-only. But by then the pharmaceutical industry already had a new replacement in the last stages of development.

In 1955, Leo Sternbach of Hoffmann-La Roche synthesized a new class of drugs—benzodiazepines. These compounds worked on the same neurotransmitter system as barbiturates, suppressing the central nervous system in nearly the same way. And was sold as the safer and nonaddictive alternative to barbiturates.

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Benzodiazepines: The Safer and Nonaddictive Alternative to Barbituates

Pharmaceutical companies wasted no time in pushing the narrative for the new drug “Librium”.

Benzodiazepines were marketed primarily as sedatives and tranquilizers, emphasizing their superiority over barbiturates due to fewer risks of overdose and addiction compared to barbiturates.

Posters would often state:

“Safer than barbiturates. Non-addictive. Low risk.”

Sound familiar?

But within a decade, the truth became clear: benzodiazepines carried the same addictive and similar fatal potential as their predecessors. Undeterred, Hoffmann-La Roche created a stronger benzodiazepine and repackaged the drug. Their new flagship product? Diazepam, better known as Valium.

Advertisements emphasized their safety, efficacy, and versatility, targeting both physicians and the general public. Thanks to heavy marketing pushed partially orchestrated by the infamous Sackler Family, Valium’s prescriptions and sales soared. And before ultimately being recognized as a high-risk tranquilizer, the industry had already moved on to the next iterations—Klonopin (clonazepam) and Ativan (lorazepam).

Though chemically similar to Valium, pharmaceutical companies cleverly began rebranding these drugs as “anxiolytics” rather than tranquilizers, distancing them from barbiturates and opioids.

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Benzodiazepines: the safer and nonaddictive alternative for anxiolytics

Marketing campaigns assured the public they were safer, faster-acting, and less risky than other anxiety relieving drugs on the market —despite the fact that just 1mg of Klonopin was equivalent to 20mg of Valium. This sleight of hand dramatically increased overdose potential but the public being lost in a bundle of medical jargon, was widely unaware.

Then came the poster child of benzodiazepines: Xanax.

Xanax was marketed as a powerful and effective medication for anxiety and panic disorders when used as prescribed. However, Xanax quickly developed a reputation in pop culture, especially in hip-hop music and social media, where it was often referenced as a recreational drug. This contributed to increased illicit use, particularly among young adults and teenagers

I grew up during this time, and it was not uncommon for high schoolers to acquire and use these drugs in the party scene. It was not uncommon to hear on Monday mornings of 1 or 2 classmates who overdosed on them and ended up in the Emergency Room.

Despite growing concerns, Xanax continues to be one of the most prescribed and widely recognized anti-anxiety benzodiazepines in the world.

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Benzodiazepines: the safer and nonaddictive alternative for everything

Despite the growing risk of abuse and addiction numbers growing, the pharmaceutical industry learned something amazing from Xanax and Valium. It was that when benzodiazepines were categorized under new more specific categories often as “short term treatment”. The history of addictive and dangerously abusive potential usually did not follow the new classification of a new category.

Business-wise, this made sense because a company could then release a benzodiazepine as a specific treatment protocol and start with essentially a blank slate. Often times it was even downplayed that the drug was a benzodiazepine at all, and was instead marketed as a new and emerging drug specifically for the specific treatments

Examples are:

• Anxiolytics (anti-anxiety drugs) – e.g., diazepam (Valium), alprazolam (Xanax)
• Hypnotics (sleep aids) – e.g., temazepam, triazolam
• Muscle relaxants – e.g., diazepam
• Anticonvulsants – e.g., clonazepam, diazepam
• Pre-anesthetic agents – e.g., midazolam

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The present-day crisis

As of 2024, over 100 million benzodiazepine prescriptions are filled in the U.S. alone—roughly one for every three Americans. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, over 30% of opioid overdose deaths are directly linked to benzodiazepines.

This is the cycle. The same blueprint. Again and again.

A dangerous drug emerges.

A “safer” alternative replaces it.

The truth is concealed.

The consequences are devastating.

A “safer” alternative replaces it again, the pharmaceutical industry profits at every step and the cycle continues.

Are you seeing the pattern yet? –

"If we doctors threw all our medicines into the sea, it would be that much better for our patients and that much worse for the fishes." Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes, MD

Now this obviously is not the pattern for all synthetic compounds. Some things are genuinely amazing feats of engineering. Antivirals, Antibiotics, Immunosuppressants, Monoclonal Antibodies. Metformin, Antiaging drugs like GLP-1, NAD, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide and many many more.

So what does this all have to do with kava. Well. Now let’s go back twenty years to the re-introduction of this fascinating root.

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How kava became a prescription anxiety treatment

The complete takeover of benzodiazepines across the mental health space is exactly around the time kava came on the scene. Now remember, in the late 1990’s. Kava, a ceremonial drink native to the tribes of the South Pacific, was discovered to be highly effective in alleviating anxiety disorders. It was discovered to be so effective and growing in popularity so fast, that it began being prescribed by medical professionals in the category of anxiolytics to treat anxiety disorders. This interest in a natural alternative, is around the same time Klonopin and Xanax had also begun to be aggressively marketed in the anxiolytics category.

But there was a big difference between kava and xanax.

Kava was a plant, a natural herb. It was found to be non-addictive and did not create chemical dependencies. Xanax on the other hand, was a fully synthetic compound owned and patented by Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. Researchers found kava did not seem to work off the same channels as all of these CNC depressants. Instead it seemed to enhance your body's natural calming abilities. Because of this, it did not seem to change any of the body’s natural neurotransmitter levels, a primary hallmark of an addictive drug.

Kava was seeming to be a lighter, non-addictive, completely natural way to manage these mental health disorders. It was quickly rising to be a beacon of hope for those struggling with these disorders. It also seemed to help people wean off some of these highly addictive opiate derivatives, and even alcoholism.

For the better part of a decade, forward thinking doctors were prescribing kava as a natural substitution for these prescription anti-anxiety meds. It was growing so fast that when the 2000’s came around, kava prescriptions had grown to 10% of the benzodiazepine market share. Which at that time was already a hundred million dollar industry, and to this day is a multi-billion dollar industry.

That’s Billion with a capital B. Over 450 million daily doses of kava were effectively prescribed during this time. These kava prescriptions were said to be effective, inexpensive, and produced no dangerous adverse effects. Paper after paper was being published on the medical benefits from this ancient tribal plant for anxiety, pain relief, and even cancer reducing benefits.

It was being touted as a “natural wonder”.

But then something strange happened.

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Why Germany banned kava in 2002

To the surprise of everyone in the industry, 26 cases of adverse effects of kava and liver damage suddenly appeared between the years of 1999-2000. Now keep in mind, this was a sliver compared to the over 3,500 actual deaths EVERY YEAR from benzodiazepine use during that same time period. But, it still was the first time kava had been questioned to be dangerous.

However, there was something reportedly off here. These cases could not be confirmed to be explicitly correlated to kava, as there was often a multitude of other drugs found in each suspect's body, which have correlations to liver damage. But before a thorough investigation could be done, BfArM, Germany’s governing body of drugs and medical devices, immediately began to put on pause, sales authorization for the half dozen prescription kava products from the market.

And that… was just the beginning.

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The regulatory loophole that kept kava off the market

After the immediate authorization pause on the entire category of kava, bFARM implemented something called a graduated plan procedure in which they would re-evaluate the efficacy and potential risks of kava.

A graduated plan procedure is normally accomplished by running something called a “benefit/risk ratio” on the product in question. In medicine, a benefit/risk ratio compares how much good a treatment will do, against how much harm it might cause. Doctors use this comparison to decide if a treatment is worth using, and regulators (like BfArM) use this to decide if a product should be approved for use. If the positive effects, like: curing a disease, improving symptoms, outweigh the possible negative effects, then the treatment is considered safe and effective for patients. This helps ensure that patients get treatments that are more likely to help than harm them.

However, instead of a standard assessment testing protocol they usually do with… literally every other product used in the medical industry, they decided to take a very…. unique approach. And this is where things went off the rails. Instead of evaluating the abundant history of kava’s benefits as a whole, the hundreds of research articles from universities and clinical researchers around the world, the thousands of years of history of the root being safely used, BfArM Germany’s regulatory body for drugs and the largest drug approval authority stretching across all of Europe, decided to restrict this benefit/risk assessment only to clinical research undergone by the specific companies who were selling kava in Germany.

This meant every single study, every single article, every single paper showing kava’s efficacy in anti-anxiety cases, anti-cancer, even pain relief and a number of other factors, were not considered valid in the assessment. The only things allowed in this assessment were clinical trials conducted by these specific companies.

Now this was fine because a few years prior, each company had already undergone rigorous testing and clinical trials to show efficacy of the product. This was a mandatory process to be approved as a medical product in Germany. These clinical trials easily confirmed the effectiveness of kava in relation to the already published scientific literature on the plant.

So kava should have passed with flying colors right?

Well, in an unprecedented move, during analysis of the trials, BfArM decided to implement a new set of standards and rules in how they specifically assessed the category of kava, and how kava’s benefit/risk ratio will be calculated. This is not normal behavior and I don’t think this actually has ever been done before.

These new rules stated that kava in particular, must qualify under new guidelines for testing to prove efficacy of a positive benefit. Usually older clinical trials are considered to be still valid, but BfArM decided they would enforce this new rule across everything in the present, as well as in the past. Which meant every single clinical trial the companies had completed previously before this new rule was implemented, were now invalid.

So, Since no studies on kava researched elsewhere around the world were considered relevant, no previous clinical trials in the country itself were allowed, and no clinical trials by the companies were considered valid, there was then not a single piece of research that now qualified to show kava being an effective therapeutic. This meant, at the end of BfArMs assessment, kava was given a negative benefit-risk ratio and marketing authorization was then pulled in 2002.

Keep in mind, pulling marketing authorization is the ultimate last resort. Usually you slap a warning label on the side for potential risks or you limit dosage amounts or something. This was totally uncalled for. Well then run some new clinical trials under the new guidelines you might say! Well yes that’s true, although it would be expensive as clinical trials are commonly in the millions, this was totally doable. But that wasn't the end of it.

At that same time, BfArM also declared kava was NOW a “new and unknown drug entity”. Because of this new classification, this meant any company selling kava or interested in selling kava, now had to run a complete set of preclinical data BEFORE they could re-run clinical trials with humans.

This meant pharmacodynamics testing (what the drug does to the body), Pharmacokinetics (what the body does to the drug), and can include absorption testing, distribution testing, metabolism testing, excretion testing, along with both invivo and in vitro testing for drug toxicity.

It would be great to piggy back some data from research institutions on some of these tests which were already done, but this new rule stated not only did they have to do this testing on their own. EACH company had to do it on their own. No company could share with another. That’s tens of millions of dollars of testing there.

Even with these hurdles, it turns out most of the companies who were being subject to these new bylaws would’ve done the pre-clinical, animal testing, and clinical trials. They would’ve paid tens of millions of dollars to qualify their product, if someone would have told them they could.

It turns out, even though this new massive pack of testing was now mandatory, the steps and criteria to the application and approval process were actually hidden from the public, and was never explicitly released to the manufacturers and/or researchers. So not only did everyone have to start over, no one had the list of trials and research that was now mandatory to get done.

Everyone was just kept in the dark. Imagine this kafkaesque scenario. You get a call from your work, you are being put on leave as your university has informed them you never graduated. You contact your university to find out they are suddenly revoking your degree, citing a need to reassess your academic qualifications. Despite your years of study, research, and successful completion of coursework, the institution demands you now undergo a battery of new exams, certifications, and evaluations, costing thousands and thousands of more dollars and countless hours.

When you inquire about the specific requirements, the university remains tight-lipped, offering only vague assurances that the new standards are "more rigorous" and "better aligned with industry needs." Then every request for further clarification is met with silence. Your degree remains in limbo, while you navigate an invisible maze of new prerequisites and undisclosed expenses. Sounds absurd right? It is.

A couple other rules were instated, one being the new research would have to be audited and conducted under GLP standards or “Good Laboratory Practices”. A standard the majority of studies in all industries, to this day do not meet, nor are they required to meet. Even if the producers could react, the damage was already done. The result of these unprecedented regulatory actions and refusal for transparency ended in a seemingly well-orchestrated worldwide panic.

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What the German courts ruled about kava liver toxicity

In the following months of the initial de-authorization from the most influential drug approval agency in Europe, many countries followed suit and banned kava importation entirely. This completely devastated the industry and drove under thousands of family kava farms in the South Pacific. Many countries still have kava imports banned to this day.

Mathias Schmidt, a PhD researcher and herbal specialist who worked on the cases stated how at this point, it was no longer about kava. This same mechanism for denying marketing authorization could be applied to ANY other herbal or medicinal product under a simple claim of hypothetical risk. One could outright ban ginger based off completely hypothetical risk of injury

Mathias Schmidt, PhD, studied pharmacy at the University of Tuebingen in Germany. He works as a freelance specialist for herbal medicines, with emphasis on quality issues of medicinal plants, including kava..

The real kicker was, not only had they completely collapsed the entire kava market, they also included a formal recommendation to every medical professional, to substitute a certain synthetic anti-anxiety compound to kava, (which we may or may not have spoke about earlier), to monopolize the market. But why didn’t the companies fight these bans in court, as others have in similar situations?

Well, they tried—but they couldn’t.

You see In Germany, decisions made by regulatory agencies like BfArM, cannot actually be legally contested until they are finalized. And in a striking turn of events, BfArM delayed finalizing its decision on kava for ten whole years— and only doing so after facing mounting individual legal threats for ignoring all correspondence on the matter. They were stuck, unable to act upon the category for a decade. That’s a long time.

BfArm finalized its decision on Kava in 2014, the kava companies who were left holding marketing authorizations took BfArM to court. They laid out a mountain of evidence of a seemingly intentional effort to remove kava from Germany’s medicinal market.

After years of delays and hearings, on June 10, 2014, the court ruled in favor of the kava companies. The verdict stated:

• New regulations could not be retroactively applied to established products.
• Mere suspicion about a product’s safety was not sufficient grounds for a negative benefit-risk assessment or a marketing ban.
• Claims of kava’s liver toxicity were based on assumptions, not hard data, and the actual risk was deemed “very rare.”
• The proposed alternatives—benzodiazepines—were not equivalent substitutes, as they posed a far greater risk to patients.

At the time of the ruling, benzodiazepine-related deaths in the U.S. alone were estimated at 7,500 per year. By 2021, that number had risen to 12,500 deaths annually—and that’s just in the U.S. Meanwhile, kava, a non-addictive, natural remedy, had been removed from the market under false pretenses.

Let’s take a moment to meditate on this number as It’s almost impossible to truly grasp the loss of 12,500 lives. When we see numbers like these, they often feel distant—just statistics on a page. But each one was a living, breathing human being with dreams, ambitions, and the potential to change the world in ways we will now never know.

20 days later after the courts ruled on behalf of the kava companies, on June 30th, 2014 BfArM Germany’s regulatory government agency, appealed the court decision and extended the legal battle. An update as of 2019, BfArM has again pulled marketing authorizations for kava in Germany.

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Why kava still carries a liver warning today

So what happened here?

Well, no one is actually sure. BfArM is not talking about the reasons for making it their highest priority to have all kava companies currently approved for use in the country, be pulled from the market. No one knows why BfArM made it their highest priority to pull all marketing authorization for kava.

No one knows why BfArM did not tell the companies how they could be re-authorized.

No one knows why BfArM began enforcing more rigorous testing requirements specifically for the category of kava and nothing else.

No one knows why BfArM disqualified any and all research spanning decades of kava’s positive benefits.

No one knows why BfArM decided to no longer accept any previous clinical data on kava

And No one knows why they were suggesting benzodiazepines as a safer alternative to kava,

Benzodiazepines, as we covered earlier, have a long, well-documented history of dangerous side effects, severe addiction, and patient deaths—yet kava remains the one to this day, burdened with entire country bans and cautionary labels.

Even in the United States today, we are required to place liver risk warnings on anything related to kava, a consequence of outdated cases from Germany’s BfArM.

Absurd, right? But is it?

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Big business, political corruption, and profiting off death

In 1967, the sugar industry bribed three Harvard scientists to publish research claiming sugar was harmless and that heart disease was caused by saturated fats—an outright lie that shaped decades of public health policy. And yet, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, my own mother and her geriatric doctor still believe fat is the culprit.

Or take Coca-Cola’s Global Energy Balance Network, an initiative designed to downplay the role of nutrition in obesity and shift blame away from sugar consumption. Or the American Heart Association’s stamp of approval on cereals like Cheerios and Lucky Charms—purchased for as little as $650 a year, without any real scientific backing. And one of the most memorable moments in pharmaceutical history that the mass media does not report on.

In 2004, Merck Pharmaceuticals agreed to a $4.85 billion settlement in lawsuits over its blockbuster drug Vioxx, which had been generating up to an impressive $2.5 billion dollars in revenue EVERY single year for the half decade it was on the market. The company was said to be found liable for deliberately concealing critical data linking the drug to significant cardiovascular risks.

By the time Vioxx was finally withdrawn from the market, an estimated 20 million Americans had already been prescribed the medication and medical researchers determined that approximately 88,000 of those Americans suffered heart attacks as a direct result of taking VIOXX. With a staggering 38,000 of those cases proving FATAL.

Despite the staggering human cost and the hefty financial penalty, Merck Pharmaceutical still managed to come out unscathed with a little under $10 billion in net profit on the drug.

38,000.

It’s a number so staggering that the weight of it almost slips through our fingers. And again, when death is measured in statistics, it becomes easy to overlook the reality: these were people, not numbers.

38,000 empty chairs at dinner tables.

38,000 unfinished stories.

38,000 unique lives, robbed from existence.

And for every life lost, there are millions more forever altered—the spouses who had to bury their life partner, the children who will grow up without a mother or father. We don’t think of loss in numbers, we feel it in moments.

It’s the phone call that never comes again. It’s the voice we’ll never hear once more.

It’s the birthdays that pass uncelebrated.

This loss of life isn’t just history—it’s happening, right now, to people just like us.

And for what. Money?

That should make you mad. It should infuriate you.

Are we just a society with a short memory? Are we that easily manipulated?

Are we so controlled by media that we get glued to netflix and become docile weak sheep?

Surely, we aren’t just stupid… are we?

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What the kava liver scare teaches us

This subject was not for the faint of heart and because of that, if you made it this far in the talk, I know without a doubt you are probably a human being who has unplugged from the matrix.

I urge you, from now on, even though it may be challenging at times— to question everything.

I’m not going to tell you, to research things for yourself and challenge authority.

I’m not going to tell you, to never blindly accept what authorities, corporations, regulatory agencies, or doctors tell you.

Obviously, I won’t tell you those things, because I can’t and I’m not a doctor. But I CAN tell you, you may find it helpful to research things for yourself. Heck don’t even trust my word for it, do your own due diligence on the opinions I stated here. Use critical thinking. Challenge beliefs.

It will be hard at first, but these skills are like muscles. The more you use them, the stronger you get. Seek the truth, and the truth will set you free.

So what about kava? Is it true that there is corruption here?

Are the systems and agencies that downplayed critical information about the addictive and mortal side effects of certain drugs over the last century, also the same ones that planned a brilliant maneuver to pull a non-addictive, natural and unpatentable remedy from consumers who needed it?

I don’t know. I’m not a medical researcher, physician, or lawyer. And I of course will not make claims that will cause this video to be taken down. So. Again, I don’t know, but it is very interesting. You know, sometimes, I imagine a world where people believe that heaven on earth is found through spreading light to others.

A world where politicians are driven by a deep sense of responsibility, caring more for their impact on society than money or their own image.

A world where our government treats our hard-earned tax dollars with the same care and deliberation as a child who, after a summer of tireless work at her lemonade stand, finally saves enough to buy her first bicycle.

We live in an extraordinary society, shaped by remarkable individuals. Though we are not perfect, I believe most of us are good-hearted, and striving for something greater. It is essential that we stand together, speak up, and take action for the common good.

I often think about those who have yet to experience the joy of kava—simply because I was a coward, hesitating to talk about these things for the last 7 years..As we reflect, let us remember: the good we find is not meant to be kept to ourselves. By pushing past hesitation, we not only enrich our own lives but we also can illuminate a new path for others.

Share what is meaningful, extend knowledge freely, and bring others into the discovery.

The time to act is now.

Well I hope this was helpful and was as eye opening to you as it was to me. I apologize it took so long to finally make a video of this, it was a doozy. We’ll start getting more pumped out faster for now on.

Thank you for sticking around and I apologize if it went a little off topic as I didn’t really know where I wanted to go with this so hopefully most of it makes sense.

If you appreciated this content, please like and subscribe, again share this with a friend who might be on the verge of trying kava and may be hesistant. . Spread the word.

We do not need to be mere pawns in a grander system of control;

We have the power to be the captains of our own lives.

Mahalo nui