Botanical Education Alliance: “Confidential” Documents Reveal Funding Discrepancies
For the past year the Botanical Education Alliance has been collecting donations to keep kratom legal. But it seems unlikely that many of their claims about how the money was spent are true.

In their unaudited financial statements, we find a claim that $75,693.23 was spent on “Eight Factor Scientific Reports:

Just to be clear, I asked the BEA directly if this 8 Factor Scientific Report was the same one as the American Kratom Association submitted (and paid for). The BEA replied that it was not. Subsequently the Drug Enforcement Administration responded to my Freedom of Information Act request, indicating that it was, and contradicting the BEA’s claims.

The BEA failed to explain themselves further and stopped replying to my tweets. I also confirmed with the FDA that they did not receive an eight factor analysis from the BEA (so I know they didn’t mistakenly send it to the FDA instead of the DEA).
As you can see from their tweets, they’re also staking the claim that they submitted two reports of 200 pages each, one of which was public and one of which was not “due to privacy law.”
They doubled down on their claims of confidentiality in a recent fundraising email, stating that while they submitted many documents, they are prohibited from proving this claim publicly (though apparently able to use it to solicit donations):

As you can see from the underlined sentence (fragment), they’re claiming some of their documents are protected by legal non-disclosure agreements. What they submitted was an 11 page letter from their law firm, which noted that they were also submitting a “confidential document” that was marked “Confidential Business Information.”

Guess what happens when you submit a confidential document to the DEA as a public comment? (Hint: the answer is in the question.)
That’s right kiddo, the document isn’t confidential at all. The 73 page document can be found in the Federal Register, marked exactly as stated.

Two more documents were submitted by the BEA in addition to the aforementioned 11 page letter and 73 page confidential document. One was an eight page study on the pharmacology and legality of kratom (which they had nothing to do with) and the other was an 18 page letter from their lawyers.
Added up we are nowhere near 200 pages and even farther from the BEA’s claim of double that amount. If we add the AKA document plus the other stuff, we clear 200 pages. But regarding the vast majority of the BEA’s claims, I am unable to verify them and in many cases have falsified them.
