Last Saturday morning I was
at the Health Food section in the bottom floor of the Clot Mares market in San
Antonio to purchase some tofu when an Ibicenco woman I knew came up and asked
me if I had any idea what was happening with Kava. I replied that I was
possibly about as up to date as anybody else and explained the situation. Readers
of the last two issues will be more up to date than she was (and more up to
date than most people in the world). She said that for some time she had been
regularly purchasing a relaxing natural medicine from one of the pharmacies
in Vila (Ibiza town) and that one of the listed ingredients was 'kavakava'.
During February, though, she said the medicine was not available but that it
was now back on the shelves and she had just purchased another batch. She was
surprised to find a small sticker, though, stuck over the portion that previously
listed kava as one of the ingredients. The sticker read (in Spanish)
'No contiene Kavakava' (‘does not contain Kava').
Well, it seems the media scare, which reached a peak in Germany towards the
end of last year, has now had its effect on Spain. But what is it all about?
In early November 2001 the
German Bf ArM - the Federal Institute of Drugs and Medical Devices in Bonn -
announced that it had received from German doctors reports that there had been
24 cases of individuals with various levels of liver damage in which it was
suspected that there was a possible connection with the intake of medicinal
kava extract/tablets as an anxiety/stress reliever. The Bf ArM (Germany's
equivalent of the US Food and Drug Administration, the FDA) then requested information
and 'pro and con' kava views from the pharmaceutical, health food and
medical professions to enable them to try and make some formal decision about
the safety of kava in medical extract form. They gave a deadline of 21st
December 2001 for reports to reach their office and they were expected to make
a decision by the end of January 2002. They began their decision-making meetings
on 6th January and, as a result...it seems that the press around
the world has announced a German 'ban' on the use of kava extract in
natural medicines used to combat stress, anxiety, tension and other such ills
of the modern world. Possibly not to be outdone by their German colleagues,
the French government announced a pre-emptive ban on all medicinal kava
products on 14th January and their medicinal registration within
France was withdrawn that day. Certain Pacific Island states, the world's major
kava exporters, were puzzled, shocked and, to put it mildly, angry.
And rightly so! A Kanak (indigenous Melanesian New Caledonian) friend
and colleague wrote to me on 17th January, "The French and German
prohibition on the use of kava is big news in Vanuatu and here. Just
when an island product could permit our small economies to survive, the big
countries put a stop to it...PS One should hint to the French and Germans that
it would be better to ban alcohol and tobacco, which are a lot more dangerous
than kava!" (Translated from the French). Import orders for South
Pacific kava were rapidly cancelled by companies in the US and Europe
and by early March kava exports from the Pacific had juddered to a halt.
This is a disaster for Pacific
Island economies, particularly for Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga. There is
no gold, oil or other rich mineral resources in most of the Pacific islands
(except for gold and copper in Papua New Guinea, and nickel in New Caledonia,
but neither of these countries export kava), leaving heavily-forested
islands in the western Pacific rather desperately open to dubious (mostly SE
Asian) logging companies as one of the few possible sources of income besides
the export of copra (the smoked and dried meat of the coconut). The Vanuatu
government had counted on a 16% increase in income in 2002 over its kava
exports from last year. Now these governments, and their kava-growing
populations, seem to have been kicked and insulted by 'the white man's world'
yet once again. Overseas countries, and foreign entities such as the World Bank,
the IMF and foreign economic advisors to these Pacific nations have perpetually
been telling them that they must develop exports that will cut down on their
needs for overseas financial aid. Kava seemed like the ideal answer:
it was local, traditional and did not require backbreaking labour to prepare
for export. It looked like parts of the Pacific had finally found one of their
own products that would enable them to achieve some form of economic independence.
Then the European press fanned the flames of a frenzy, announced the German
'ban' and stopped the whole export industry in its tracks. It is said there
is nearly (Australian) $200 million worth of kava, growing in Pacific
Island nations, ready for export within the next couple of years. The whole
situation is extremely depressing and Pacific Island governments and indigenous
inhabitants relying on kava exports have a right to be absolutely furious.
The kava-exporting nations called urgent meetings in January and February
2002 to try and deal with the rather hysterical accusations regarding kava
and liver damage that were appearing in the European press. As the drinking
of kava by Pacific males is an extremely ancient and respected practice,
it goes without saying that more is known about kava in the Pacific by
Pacific Islanders than by European (or American) scientists - and liver damage
in traditional kava drinkers is not a known side-effect.
The already-planned Pacific
Herbs Business Forum meeting took place in the capital of Vanuatu 18th-20th
February. Sponsored by the Brussels-based Centre for Development of Enterprise
in association with the Commonwealth Secretariat in London and the (Netherlands)
Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Co-operation it brought together
nearly 100 professionals involved in the production and consumption of Pacific
medicinal plants and related natural products. Because of recent events in Europe,
kava was the main topic of discussion. What were the reasons for the
kava 'ban' and what should Pacific Island nations do?
But wait a minute. The main
'problem' seems to lie in Germany, and with France and Britain (and now Spain
- and with warnings at the beginning of this month in Australia) and other nations
recommending the withdrawal from sale of kava-based anti-stress medicines
based purely upon the German announcement and German press-generated statements
circulated around the world. Has anyone really followed up what is going on
in Germany? Seemingly not. My wife and I spent three weeks in Germany from late
December and I used the opportunity to telephone widely to try and get to the
bottom of all this. Readers may be interested to know - and Pacific Islanders
rather shocked and angered to hear - that medicinal kava extracts to
combat stress and anxiety are still openly on sale in German pharmacies (I rang
a colleague in Germany on Monday night – 18th March - to get this
confirmed) and there is (as yet) no official 'ban' on medicinal kava
products announced by the relevant German Government Ministry. The Bf ArM in
Bonn has not yet announced any decision - although everyone was expecting an
announcement at the end of January. This seems to be a situation where a media-inspired
frenzy, regarding the possibility of a 'ban', has in fact created a de facto
ban, to the detriment of the long-suffering Pacific Islanders, who have had
long experience with the inconsistencies, irrationalities, irrelevancies and
- to put it plainly, idiocies - of the 'white mans' world. What would be rather
nice poetic justice, in a way, would be to see a group of traditional Pacific
chiefs, or a group of Pacific Nations, get together and bring a legal court
case against certain European nations (and the EU in Brussels, for good measure)
and certain European media outlets for sheer stupidity, cultural incomprehension
and lack of respect (and, just for good measure, include a whopping financial
fine to cover loss of kava export revenue)!
Tens of thousands - if not
hundreds of thousands - of men from the kava-drinking areas of the Pacific
have been regularly using the sacred drink for untold generations and no-one
has any stories of liver damage caused by it (in fact in certain areas of northern
Vanuatu, where a mild form of hepatitis is almost hereditary, kava-drinking
seems in no way to aggravate that). Then the 'white man' comes, his missionaries
(at least in Vanuatu) try to prohibit kava drinking as associated with
'heathenism and devil worship', colonial governments demean it as 'unhygienic',
tourists don't like the taste... and then what happens? The 'white man' suddenly
finds out that there is money to be made from it, it can be made into a relaxing
medicine to treat one of the 'white mans'' major diseases, 'stress'. Everyone
tells Pacific Islanders, "Plant lots of this wonderful bush and we will
buy its roots from you and you will make lots of money". Over nearly
the last couple of decades there has been a rather frenzied rush amongst European
and US pharmacological specialists to experiment with the plant's roots, to
try and decipher its chemical secrets, to take a bit from here and a bit from
there, concentrate it to get a stronger effect and so on and so forth. You know
the game. They forget that it is a sacred plant, given in its entirety from
the Spirit World, but modifiable along certain traditional guidelines. In much
of northern Vanuatu, it is a Woman, or from a Woman (and therefore forbidden
for women to drink, except in a special form for medicinal purposes), and is
due respect as that Woman was due respect. By the early 1990s the Pacific began
receiving visits from various forms of 'bioprospectors', some good, some bad,
looking for special varieties of the plant or for access to particular sources
of supply for their employer’s back in Europe or the US. By the mid-1990s, even
Vanuatu, always more cautious about protecting its monopoly of most of the world's
varieties of kava and more concerned about ensuring regular supplies
for its traditional drinkers, began exporting. By the mid-to-late 1990s overseas
producers of medicinal kava extract and kava tablets and associated
products were crying out for more and more and more. Prices per kilo of fresh
or dried root or powder exported from the Pacific became rather reasonable for
the growers. By the late 1990s, certain overseas interests were trying to patent
the plant, or its chemical ingredients, but with no real notable success. Then
certain 'white people' started turning up in the Pacific, telling Pacific Island
states that they would have to lower their kava export prices and some
even hinted that if they did not, other countries would start growing kava
with modern methods and take over the export market.
Well, Hawaii has started
mass-growing kava plants in plantations, with all the modern accoutrements.
Under missionary pressure, the traditional practice of kava drinking
had almost died out in Hawaii, as have the original Polynesian Hawaiians (only
1% of the population is now of pure Polynesian descent, 8% of mixed Polynesian
descent) and the real understanding of kava has seemingly disappeared
as well. Modern 'plantation methods' do not necessarily produce the best kava,
and it is said that if one split open the roots of an Hawaiian plantation kava
it is soft like a cucumber inside. In Vanuatu one might consider that to be
a plant not worth drinking, but then most drinkers or purchasers of roots for
pharmaceutical companies in Hawaii or the mainland US would probably not know
that. By early 2000 French and German representatives of certain kava-importing
pharmaceutical companies were hinting to the Pacific nations that (do I hear
"Unless you lower the price of your kava roots"?) another plant
with similar effects to kava might be found. Readers with knowledge of
business processes in the commodities business will recognize here the general
pattern of stages common to overseas big business interests trying to corner
control of a potentially lucrative source material. If one follows through these
stages, the next obvious step is one where imports are cut off for a while so
that the increasingly desperate exporters are then forced to lower their base
price to almost nothing to entice the importers to begin purchasing stocks again.
The first bit of this last stage has effectively been done by the rather dramatic
and ill-researched nature of the recent European press reports.
It is a sad story and one
that Pacific Island nations are rather familiar with. The West has finally discovered
kava, and has adopted kava for its own purposes: it has taken
it over, played with it and changed it, out of almost all recognition, for its
own needs so that it bears almost no resemblance to its original form. In doing
so, they may have completely messed it up and may have therefore not just left
the situation in a mess, but have seriously damaged a series of small nations
that were relying on this plant for assistance in economic independence. Worst
of all, the West has shown a lack of respect for a traditional aspect of the
spiritual beliefs of a series of nations who are so far away from this side
of the world that they cannot really fight back. It is the continuing story
of colonialism, exploitation and destruction.
Actually, the West needs
kava more than certain Pacific nations need the money from kava
root exports. At least in Vanuatu, if there is less kava exported, there
will certainly be no lack of kava for the indigenous kava drinkers,
and there is no lack of the latter in Vanuatu! But on what basis is Germany
considering its potential 'ban'? Why has this 'problem' come up only now, when
German doctors were the first Europeans to begin looking at the medicinal properties
of kava as long ago as 1860 and medicinal kava extract has been
available in certain German medicines since 1890? What has this got to do with
Eivissa/Ibiza and you reading this column in the UK or the USA or wherever?
It actually affects us all, and in my concluding article on kava next
week I shall explain why. |