Transcription
You'll like this, dude. Check this shit out. Hungarian. Very few in the world. Whoa. Ultimate countercurrent chromatography instrument. Period. It's the coolest thing on the planet. Super complicated. There's like I got a book on it if you want a recommendation about it. It's really, really cool.
You're you're looking at a quarter of a million square feet between seven different facilities. We have over a 100 rotovaps. During co we made hand sanitizer. So I had some 800 L stainless steel reactors. 350 employees just for this production, R&D, tablet pressing, and then formulations and packaging and shipping. It's a finished product. So, inside of there's a bottle. And then the rest of the company's about another 150 people on the cannabis side.
It's no secret American Shaman makes the highest quality CBD products in the world. But did you know they're made right here in Kansas City? Vince Sanders is the founder of American Shaman, a cannabis company that was at the forefront of industrializing the production of seven hydroxy mitragynine. We're well known for making cannabis products like this. And people started contacting us to see if we could make mitragynine shots. This is early 2020.
So I just started reading all the papers I could find on the cure the drug overdose. It can be a life-saving intervention or a killer herb. We investigate. I had never heard of it before we did the show. I was pulling the audience informed like most of them have not and I came across a 2019 paper that the NIH had done and looked at mitragynine as a potential novel opioid replacement on a rodent study for anxiety and pain. What they came to the conclusion of is that yes, this worked really well for both anxiety and pain management, but it wasn't the mitragynine. the mitragynine was a pro-drug and that their liver was converting 10% of the mitragynine to 70. It's called 7 hydroxy mitragynine. 7 hydroxy mitragynine. Seven hydroxy mitragynine is 7 hydroxymitragynine. Some people say mitragynine as well.
It was kind of an open call. Hey, here's a looks like a potentially safe novel opioid. Big pharma come check this out. Uh so I started digging around. kind of couldn't see anybody doing that which was amazing in the midst of a huge opioid crisis. So I went to our scientists that were doing cannabinoid stuff and I said stop all this solely focus on the 70.
Did you know going into this that it would be so controversial? It's being compared to opioids can act like an opioid. It's not just like an opioid. It is an opioid. It is not an opioid and they're marketed for children. They're gummy bears. They're bright colors. They're candy flavored. We withtood immediately the AKA, but the biggest attacks came from the GKC. GKC, Global Creative Coalition, which is funded by Botanic Tonics. It's a guy named Jerry Cash, a very unsavory character, which is feel free. Which is feel free, which is not seven hydroxy. Correct. So the feel-free guy is anti-7 hydroxy mitragynine very much so. Yeah. Why would the kratom industry be pushing back on your alkaloid? Sales started to plummet traditional sales. So they thought if this is who's causing us to lose revenue, we'll just get them legislated down. I know there's some legislation in the work to get 70 specifically scheduled.
The FDA is going to be recommending that the DEA consider 70 as a schedule one controlled substance. Due to all the pressures that the kratom industry had put on us with the legislators that have oh my god this is the next fentanyl wave and all that nonsense. We didn't have time to actually get our own ideas in place. We simply were fighting for existence and stopping these ban bills. And when the press started complaining about it, I invited them in. I like, "Come on, see what we're doing. Nothing hidden here. This is not this terrible synthetic drug. This is, you know, here's what we're doing. Here's how we're doing it. I'd be happy to show you exactly how we make it."
So our starting material is uh the cradle leaf itself that goes into an extraction. Right now we use d-limonin and a screw press and that gets us about 75% mitragynine. Then that gets transferred over here. We start off with this reactor. A centrifugal pump is used to transfer 850 L of methanol into a 2,000 L reaction vessel, followed by 8 kg of 85% mitragynine kratum leaf extract, 600 L of water and a 50 lb bag of Arm and Hammer sodium bicarbonate. A sample is taken for HLC analysis. So here I'm going to dip it. As the bicarbonate buffered mitragynine solution is continuously stirred at room temperature. 8 kg of oxone in an aquous slurry is added followed by 600 L of DCM.
Inside the reactor, mitragynine electron-rich indole C2 to C3 pi bond attacks the electrophilic terminal oxygen of potassium peroxy monosulfate. The active oxygen transfer component of oxone. This diyisterio selective oxygen transfer dearromatizes the pyrolic portion of the indole generating a transient oxygenated intermediate possibly an epoxide. That might be wrong. I need to double check that, but I'm I'm fairly certain that's that's that's correct. I saw a paper that suggested that. I'm I'm wondering about this epoxidation. We're we're fairly certain according to Linkry that that's that that's what is going on. Possibly an epoxide that underos intramolecular proton transfer to yield the indolanine product 7 hydroxy mitragynine. A sample of the reaction mixture was compared to the metroynine reference on HLC. See if that does something. Okay, it's two to five.
Buddy that I've known since high school, like we've been friends since 9th grade. Um, he did heroin, he did fentanyl and 70 got him off of it. A lot of the time, right, people will hear other people talk about it and they're like, "Oh, well, you know, that guy drinks the Kool-Aid cuz he works there, you know, all the stuff." But it's like I I watched it happen like he's alive because of this stuff. And it's it's always weird to me that they want to just get rid of it. It's there's not even a fight for let's just pull it off the shelves and put it into clinical trials, anything. And it's it's it's frustrating to see.
So, we have a starting material sample. We're expecting to see an almost completed reaction, if not a completed one. And then on your 8 kg, you'll see three. You'll see a byproduct, a product, and then your starting material if it is still there. And you'll see it grab the first sample right now.
Where does mitragynine come from? Like is in the word or like like where does that where do those sacks of mitragynine come from? The sacks come from our extraction facility. Oh, but I think we've moved out of that facility because of the Kansas line. That facility was in Kansas and they've scheduled as a whole over there. Every customer I've talked to, they all say the same thing. They're just going to order it online. Prohibition don't work. It is what it is. So, you're not doing any more mitragynine extraction? No, we're not allowed. Oh, damn. That sucks. Yeah, it sucks a lot. As of two weeks ago, we had to completely shutter that facility, laid 50 people off, uh, have pulled all the equipment, got all the materials out of there. Since the ban, absolutely nobody has ordered, right? Everybody's just trying to get off their stock, scared to death. So, right, literally Friday, we laid off 300 people. Let that number settle in.
After HLC shows the metrogenine has undergone at least 80% conversion, the stirring is stopped and the DCM is pumped from the reactor into a 400 L stainless steel transfer vessel and vacuum fed into a series of 10 50 L rotos where the DCM is stripped and recycled for use in future oxidations. So it's derived from kratom, but experts are warning that it's a lot more potent and a lot more serious than just natural kratom. 70 is not natural. You can think of 70 as going from amphetamine to methamphetamine. It's almost like comparing like a percoet 5 to an oxyen. Okay, that's interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's right back to reefer madness. That's what it feels like. It's 1930s reefer mad. 70 madness.
You know, I I say on the lobbying side, we we crushed the creative industry, but on the propaganda side, I mean, they killed us. They just killed us. That is Vince Sanders, one of 70's loudest proponents. Fun fact, he was once a car salesman/lcale illegal marijuana dealer. And even funner fact, after he was arrested in 2000, his attorney argued in court to void his prison term, citing, among other things, the tax revenue lost from having the number one Acura salesman in the US behind bars. And I shouldn't go to prison because I'm America's number one Acura salesman might be the saddest sentence of all time. It's uh it is what it is. But, you know, I've never backed down from any of it because I have no question that the overall good is vastly greater than any of the bads. Well over two billion servings at this point of 70. No single death attributed to solely 70. You know, there anything that 70 was in somebody's blood supply, they had, you know, their polyarmic six, eight different substances in there. So, we know this is an incredibly safe substance. Why would we get rid of it and potentially open up something that's not safe? Because that's most likely what'll happen. When they dramatically cut down on opioid prescriptions after all the oxycare, that worked well. Opioids doubled in a few years. Yeah. They immediately went to heroin and cartel said, "Oh, wait a minute. You know, this fentanyl is a whole lot cheaper and easier to bring in. We we'll do that." Then they really jump. This is whatever they replace seven with is going to be more dangerous than seven. I I pray if they bring something in, they bring seven in so at least it's safe if they don't cut it with something. Yeah. Yeah.
This will do 2D proton, oxygen, phosphorus, carbon, uh nosies, cozies. It'll I think it'll even do 3D. There's a lot of people in chemistry that are like hyper anal about exactly how you do everything and the correct amundo way and you can get as complicated as you want. He's talking about me. I am I am like this. It's a pretty big investment. Yeah. Why' you go for it? Well, cuz we're doing lots of R&D and everybody was convinced to to really know what we were making that we need something like this. As long as we're allowed to exist, I don't mind whatever the regulations are, how high that bar might be. We'll meet them. And the people that can't meet them, then maybe they shouldn't be in it. Although dealing with people like the FDA and things have been a nightmare, they've they've only made us better at the end of the day, and we'll will continue to get better.
What is Leonard doing here? Alleged to have produced 90% of the world's LSD, Leonard Picard spent 20 years in maximum security presence, but has since served as a drug policy fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, research associate in neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and deputy director of the drug policy analysis program at UCLA. Leonard is a is a science adviser, somebody that I have a lot of respect for and enjoy as a human being. Great. Cool. See you later. All right. I'll see you, Leonard. Have fun today. Yeah. Yeah. He's he's special guy.
The crude 7 hydroxy mitragynine is then redissolved in 45 L of methanol and a parasaltic pump is used to transfer the solution into a 200 L glass reactor where it's purified by a liquid liquid extraction. The vessel is charged with 75 L of nanopure water followed by 35 L of an ethylacetate hexane solution and then the methanolic 7 hydroxy tragedy.
I just watch all these arguments cross the same divide where on one side you have someone saying it's not doing anything bad and then on the other side you have someone saying it's doing something very very bad and the not bad people say not bad therefore no prohibition and the bad people say bad therefore prohibition but prohibition shouldn't even be part of this equation to begin with. It's a health medical problem not a criminal one. And so even if you hate it, even if you think it's terrible, even if you think no one should ever take it, prohibition is not a good solution because it will interfere with science. It will result in it becoming a criminal concern where people are arrested for it. It will only cause problems. And of course, it new Yeah. new opioids will emerge inevitably. And this caught us completely flatfooted. We didn't have an inkling it was coming. It was like some kind of black ops operation. It was total silence. It just showed up.
Who do you think initiated it? Well, I you know, I don't know if I want to say on camera. I'm a little worried, right? I think it I personally think it was Mullins. These individuals that are selling it know what they're doing. They know the individuals are targeting. They know the loophole and sell it as a dietary supplement. Senator Mark Wayne Mullen has been a vocal critic of 7 hydroxy mitragynine, a position industry insiders think was influenced by his 500,000 to $1 million stake in Botanic Tonics, the manufacturers of a competing product. As head of homeland security and a large investor in Botanic Tonics, I have a feeling those New York Times articles, the stuff shook him up, pissed him off. It's like, all right, well, fuck, let's kill this. And then you also have Kennedy who's a personal friend of the JW Ross. By just a crazy dealing of the cards, we've got two cabinet secretaries that are directly connected. We're looking very seriously at natural 70 uh and getting that approved. Natural 70 and we'll take a look at that very strongly. I think uh Oz and everybody will pretty pretty weird set of circumstances, but that's what it is.
As the two phases are mixed, organic impurities and inorganic sulfate and bicarbonate salts from the oxidation partition into the aquous phase while the seven hydroxy metragginine remains in the upper organic layer. The upper layer is pumped into a different series of 50 L roivaps where the hexane and ethylacetate are stripped and the seven hydroxy mitragynine puffs into a solid foam that is manually scraped and processed with a blending apparatus before being transferred into baking dishes for removal of residual solvent traces in a vacuum oven.
How much time is there? August 6 is I mean if it goes horrible August 6th is when it could stop not a lot of time. The big call to action would be you know please visit the HHS website and leave your testimonial of what 70 has done for you how it's made your life better. Uh and if it's made it worse leave that right but let's just put the the truth out there.