Recentlt i heard from the parents of the young man who died after a tobacco purge at a retreat in Peru called kapitari. The circumstances around are egregious. this video has some details.

This and other tragedies have spurred conversations on how to prevent these from happening in the future. One idea is to have a sort of 'best practices' certification for TOUR GUIDES AND AGENCIES, since getting Peruvian authorities on board with limiting a lucrative industry would be difficult most likely. This would be voluntary, international and very well publicized. Any tour worth its salt would want it.

The best practices would include medically trained personnel on site at all times among other safetymeasures.

Any ideas on how to make this a reality, and what would the best practice guideline look like?

Thanks for your input.

The Ethnobotanical Stewardship Council attempted this already. They were incubated by MAPS and ICEERS. Their effort(s) crashed and burned for a number of reasons, which can be elaborated on if necessary. As far as "regulatory" orgs go, I think that would likely have been the gold standard, which, I believe, also indicates some of the major problems with this approach, the institutions involved, and drug tourism in general.

Here's the thing; drug tourism and cultural voyeurism are inherently dangerous activities in the first place. Folks from the global north and industrial cultures certifying indigenous, mestizo, or other practitioners abounds with difficult and problematic dynamics. Claiming that "any tour worth its salt" would be clamoring for this certification evidences exactly the problematic dynamics I'm talking about (and part of the issue that ultimately doomed the ESC).

My, brief, response is that this isn't a valid project. I reviewed the ESC materials and attempted to make edits and revisions to some of their textual documents and approaches in the hopes of contributing to their project. At the time, I thought it was perhaps a valuable harm reduction approach, but as I've thought about it more and more, I have to ask, "harm reducing for whom?" Who benefits from this? Drug tourists and cultural voyeurs who are already involved in spelunking through the "exotic" ceremonies and cultural trappings of other people's heritage? Who gets to say what an appropriate ceremony is? What if "legitimate" practitioners don't want medical personnel on-hand due to their own cultural views? Now, they're no longer "worth their salt," eh?

Ultimately, I think people are going to make poor decisions regardless of whether or not a certifying agency exists, in whatever form. I feel that it makes more sense to put efforts towards education and pointing people to local/personal experiences, practices, and/or rituals. Many folks heading to the Amazon are not psychedelically naive (some are)...they simply (tend to) place ayahuasca on some pedestal and feel compelled to make some sort of pilgrimage to reflect that. Imo, that approach subjugates the cultures and rituals they claim to admire to their own desire for consumption.

Pilgrimage is unnecessary for a number of reasons...encouraging these folks via neocolonialist certification agencies is likely more problematic than helpful, imo.

You know, Snozz, what you said here is spot on, IMO. When I first heard of the ESC, I thought it was a great thing and something that was sorely needed. Then I did a quick Google search and found out that it had imploded. I also perused a critique of the organisation by what looks like a large number of academics and others. From the little I read, it seems like they're saying that ESC uses scare tactics, exaggerating the threat to would-be ayahuasca tourists and the plants themselves. I didn't read the whole thing, so I'm sure there's moar to it.

This got me thinking. Maybe the dangers of ayahuasca tourism, drug tourism in general, are overstated. Both in terms of the danger to the people and the plants. I don't know the statistics, I imagine it would be pretty much impossible to gather that data.

With that being said, I do think that drug tourism needs to be considered carefully. I think there are some issues with it. I wholeheartedly agree with Snozz's views on setting up personal rituals. You don't need to go down to Peru to experience ayahuasca, or sacred tobacco as in the OP.

To be clear, not all of the critiques of the ESC were valid, imo. A certain, notable person who routinely engages in biopiracy was an incredibly vocal critic of the organization, even though he likely engages/engaged in significantly more destructive behavior, but that's a bit of a tangent to the OP.

I believe the danger to people is far greater than the danger to the plants. And ultimately, certain activities can only be made so "safe"...there's no such thing as "safe" base-jumping, skydiving, or mountain climbing. I don't believe there's such a thing as "safe" drug tourism, and personally, I think that if "safer" drug tourism comes via an imperial/neocolonial model imposed on practitioners (or whereby practitioners "voluntarily" follow certification procedures provided by others if they want to maintain their former steady stream of customers) there are larger issues that need to be discussed before we race off to "save" the people running off to the jungle to trip balls or engage in healing or pursue whatever endeavors they've decided must take place in the jungle.

I am sorry if my language put you off, I may have misled my position and sound like I somehow support this industry, I really have a pretty low opinion of it. My interaction with it has only to do with efforts to shut down a for-profit practitioner in my area, who was doing some really dumb stuff.

Its just that this whole thing is just that-an industry- some of these retreats are pulling in decent amounts of money, and they advertise directly with these "cultural spelunkers". Now, I've never gone on one of these things, again I'm not part of the whole aya thing, but do have my opinions of it having a lot of interactions with people who are- many of whom I don't see eye to eye with. I honestly think the entire thing capitalizes on misguided westerners and impoverished communities taken over by western influence, but it exists and I was thinking of it in just those terms. As in a sort of cultural disneyland vacation destination. I'm sorry, I was not looking at it from the perspective of the native communities it directly affects, only those who take part in it, from a "consumer safety" sort of place. I guess the whole thing is quite unrealistic and short-sighted, upon consideration.

A large part (some, self included, would say all) of the responsibility for one's safety lies within themselves, but I wonder if some of these tour coordinators don't misrepresent the safety of the retreats, misleading the sometimes young inexperienced tourists who take part in these things on break from school. The person whose death inspired the question in the OP, had taken a tobacco purge after a couple nights worth of aya, and apparently was just left for hours unattended before he died and afterward there was a long coverup. The family is very upset and waging a war, beginning with the media in Australia and the internet, and are pointing fingers at the tour organizer as well as the shaman, whom IT IS CLAIMED watched TV while the kid died. They claim the tour organizer misled the family, who were involved in planning the trip I guess.

So, I just wanted to pose the question to the community here to get some insight into the whole thing in the case of further interactions with them. Thank you for your input, it is appreciated, and I am sorry if I was offensive in my language in the OP or this post.

I didn't mean to come across as offended at all. I'm not offended, I just don't think it's a viable idea and I think that it introduces a number of difficult problems into the equation. I've got some longer thoughts, but I can't type them right now and will have to add to this later.

I agree that it would be against all odds to set up any successful regulatory organization to see over drug tourism in South America. It might be slightly effective if it were to include community leaders from areas that host the activity but I have little doubt this would become corrupt fairly quickly.

I believe that the easiest route to making such a thing safe is to remove the tourism aspect. Maybe it doesn't need to be entirely removed but doing such things in your home country would often be the best bet. All we need is for one western 1st world country to pull it's head out of ass and legalize and regulate such an industry. It's much easier to affect change at home than abroad. Unfortunately, this means going up against the very entrenched war on drugs as a prerequisite to the regulatory agency.

As far as I'm concerned, this is just one more way that the perpetual "War" on drugs has f'd up our society and economy as well as theirs. From what I saw in Peru, it seems to help a select few and make a lot of people very angry at everyone involved. There are plenty of people "trying" to cash in but it really reminds me of the kids across the border from Laredo trying to sell Chiklets.