SEEING CONSPIRACIES WHERE THERE ARE NONE

I’ve always been silent when it comes to any of the negativity I’ve encountered over the years. It seems the harder I fight for the community, the more a very few get upset at me for it. I’ve been on the ground fighting for Cannabis legalization, for Salvia, and recently, to help fight to Keep Kratom Legal for a large part of my life, and I am not going to be derailed by some negative posts that have chosen to spread erroneous and false information, or who have chosen to forge our documents. Everyone has a right to their opinion, but I ask that you find out the facts and the truth for yourself before expressing those opinions and judgements..

As a board member of the Botanical Legal Defense, we put our own hard-earned money into preventing Kratom from becoming illegal in numerous states. It was a trial by fire, but we managed to get a lot of victories, for which I’ll be forever proud. In fact, I helped write the law that prevented Kratom from becoming a Schedule I drug in Illinois. I took a road trip to the capital of Illinois with a fellow board member, shook hands, pleased our case, and changed minds.

And that’s just one of the many victories we fought for as representatives of the Kratom community. That will always be something I’m extremely proud of. Ironically, I’ve spent a lot of time, energy, and money fighting for the very people who are now trying to hurt both me and my business.

Way back, my first online retail store went online in the late 1990’s. That allowed me to tromp around the world looking for sacred botanicals and entheogens. I’ve always took great pride in providing the highest quality exotic botanicals at the best prices. With well over a million customers over the years, I actually didn’t make nearly as much money as my competitors did. Why? Because I was more interested in spreading these plants to as many as possible.  From live Kratom trees, to crushed leaf, to resins and powders, and everything in-between, I believed deeply in every plant we offered.

After doing that for a decade, I was looking for a different challenge. I loved being in the lab. I always loved the science of plants. I was already testing all of the botanicals we sold, but was paying a lot of money to get those tests done. From all of our Kratom products, to Salvia and everything in-between, I wanted to be able to assure my customers that the products we were providing, were actually the products we claimed them to be.

So, I decided to take a leap of faith, and build a beyond-compliant GMP manufacturing facility from the ground up.

That dream took years to complete; from the design, to the equipment, to the staggering number of paperwork, documentation, and SOP’s required by the FDA for any manufacturing facility. But I did it. At first, I rented some space, but wanted to find space that I could call my own, space that no one could take away from me.

I built a smaller template lab and manufacturing facility. During this time I wrote the 150+ SOP’s required for a true GMP-complaint facility to operate. It was a thrilling experience, but vastly more work than I ever imagined. I hired the best veteran lab tech I could find and built up SOP’s and procedures for the main botanicals I wanted to test. These SOP’s included Kava, Kratom, Kanna, Wild Dagga, Blue Lotus, and a number of others, and have since expanded into many others.

I wasn’t going to give up on the perfect place, though, and in 2013, I found the amazing facility we currently work from. It was an amazing blank canvas in Vista, CA. I had a giant 8,000 square foot box to start with, and used every last square inch of the space to build a manufacturing facility I would be proud to own. I followed the laws to the letter.  I learned FDA regulations inside and out. I got every permit and license that was required to have a manufacturing facility.

I also wanted to build a facility with a whimsical theme, not unlike the recording studio I built and ran for over a decade called “The Playground Recording Studio” in Chicago, IL. So, we decided on an Alice in Wonderland Theme, and went full on with as colorfully tasteful a space as possible.

For me, it was as natural an evolution as possible. I was moving from being an online retailer with a deep passion for the entheogen and exotic botanical industry, to a manufacturer and product tester for the industry.

This was my dream come true. The place turned out better than I had hoped, and despite non-stop 80 hour workweeks, I knew this would be a place that I could evolve how I could help the community I believed so deeply in. The way I was going to accomplish this, was to provide small runs of products, with complete FDA-required testing of those small batches, at a price no one else could touch.

I had a nearly impossible time finding a truly GMP-compliant facility when I needed to do my small runs of products. Having to test that product for pathogens and heavy metals (not even including the alkaloid content) became an overwhelmingly expensive task.

This is where Florascience, Inc. and Wonderland-Labs would truly shine.

We would focus on small runs and provide in-house testing for those small runs. What happened, though, is that I discovered that my favorite place to be was in the lab. Years later, the novelty still hasn’t worn off. I adore being in the lab, I adore creating new profiles, finding new ways of identifying plants, or the components inside them. I love looking at alkaloid content of Kratom and Wild Dagga and Kanna and Kava and a whole host of other rare and unique plants.

I love building up profiles from the now thousands of samples we’ve tested over the years, which allows us to provide customers with even more accurate testing and more accurate results. The lab was growing from being just an in-house lab, to one that could provide stand-alone services for the community at large.

Although we’ve had a comfortable number of clients over the years for testing various botanicals (with a focus on the exotics, including Kratom and Kava), sometime in mid-2017, a flood of testing suddenly appeared at our door. We were getting in 100 Kratom samples a week, and combined with our usual workload of projects, this, for a bit, became too much for our lab to handle.

We quickly responded by building a Wonderland Client Dashboard to keep the entire project, from start to finish, including all relevant documentation, in one aesthetically pleasing place. We hired more lab techs as carefully and as quickly as we could, and we added additional machines to handle the additional workload. We sped up production times, we minimized incubation times, and were determined to continue to provide the highest quality service, at the lowest price, in the fastest time.

We’re grateful to the clients who stuck with us during this time!

This is why it’s so disheartening to see that some on REDDIT and forums have chosen to make judgements about who I am, what I do, and why I do it on hearsay and rumor, rather than taking the time to simply have a conversation with me. I’m not hard to find, I’m deeply passionate about the entheogen community, and extremely proud of both the beyond-compliant GMP facility and the testing lab that I built from the ground up.

I’m getting weary of being hounded by the very community I am trying to help, and have finally decided to speak up.  My biz number is 800-647-3154. Call that number, ask for my personal cell and then have an actual conversation with me, and THEN make any judgements about who I am, what I stand for, what I’m all about and why I am so passionate about what I do and how I do it? 

There’s no scam here; no one trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. We’re a team of real people, doing our best to provide a service to a community where it seems a few are very quick to judge and assume the worst about people who are trying to help a community getting beaten down, mislabeled, and misunderstood by external forces. Thank you to those who chose and will choose to call me because of this thread; I’ve had some great conversations and look forward to more. And thank you to all the loyal clients who have made us their testing lab of choice and/or their Kratom testing lab of choice.

We specialize in exotic botanicals such as Kratom and Kava. We’ve amassed a large database of varieties and strains of various entheogens and exotic botanicals. As a result, can not only say with great conviction whether or not the material we have received is what you hope it is, we can often verify whether the variety you’re being told is actually what it is as well.

In the history of our business, we’ve never dealt with more negativity, impatience, accusation, and people simply looking for a fight than over the past six months than we have with a few of the Kratom clients we have taken on. I know it is only a few bad apples making all the noise, but I finally decided I’m done letting those bad apples have the stage all to themselves. This post is just one of the efforts to finally speak up for myself and all the time, energy and money I put into fighting for various botanicals and the communities that surround them.

Lastly, for anyone who reads this page or has found us from a post on a forum or on REDDIT, please take this 5% discount on our already low testing prices. “Write “GENUINE 5 PERCENT” on your Sample Submission form, send it to me in an email, or call us up and let us know you want to use the code. For a one-time 25% discount on any ID/Percentage testing, just write “ID 25 PERCENT” on your Sample Submission Form, send it to me in an email, or call us up and let us know that.

My passion runs deep for the Kratom community, and this facility is my beacon; it’s my way to give back to a plant and a community that has given me so much.

Best Regards,
Keith & the entire staff at Wonderland Labs