eBay targets sellers of plant in the coffee family.

Ebay has decided to target sellers of the plant Mitragyna Speciosa on their website. It is a tree from Indonesia more commonly known by the name kratom. They have done so under the pretext of their drugs and paraphernalia policy. Their policy specifically states that it bans the sale of narcotics and scheduled substances. The thing though is that if you call eBay and try to dispute this policy you are not allowed to and are given the runaround by phone operators.

Here is the thing. Kratom is not a scheduled substance. It is a mild narcotic though. Just as the plants: Ashwaganda, Belladonna, Betony, Black Coshosh, Bugleweed, Butter Tree, California Poppy, Camphor Tree, Catnip, Celastrus, Chamomile, Chir Pine, Coffee Senna, Country Mallow, Guarana, Hops, and horse chestnut are. Many of which are commonly used herbs in todays society. Hops are used in beer, California Wild Poppy is the California state wildflower, Chamomile is commonly used in tea, specifically sleepytime tea which can be found at most big name department stores, and there is Guarana, which is used in almost every energy drink out there today.

In my opinion if the big name sellers want to ban people on their sites from providing the leaves of the Mitragyna Speciosa tree then they will have to either specifically list the plant on their sales policy or crack down on every single other narcotic plant out there.

If a company like eBay wants to use the paraphernalia portion of their policy to go after Mitragyna Speciosa there is a lot of hypocrisy as well. Being that it is not scheduled, as I stated earlier. Being that they allow glass pipes that could be misused to consume a scheduled substance, but are marketed for tobacco use only on their website.

I also find it troubling that they are allowed to do this to the community of people selling the Mitragyna Speciosa plant because there are other plants out there that show how much of a double standard they have, like the morning glory plant. It has seeds that contain a schedule 3 substance within them, yet they somehow magically do not decide to go after morning glory seed sellers. Even though there are a lot of people who abuse the seeds of the plant for a psychedelic high.

I think that companies like eBay will someday be replaced by alternative sites that have a similar and reliable auction structure yet do not choose to hawk over and discriminate upon their users in a way much worse but comparable to the way YouTube does their users with their community guidelines. I think that the war on the herbalist, herb based scientific and herb based spiritual community's needs to stop and that once people begin to change things by voting with their dollars and not listening to ignorant misnomers perpetuated by law enforcement and media agency's we will start to see some real change in drug policy in this country and an end to the attacks on vulnerable community's.