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Sufferin' Sassafras : Used in candles and soaps, it's also the key ingredient in ecstasy
Vancouver Magazine, November 2004
Robins, a Vancouver-based massage therapist, was operating an online business selling essential oils last year when he received several requests for an unusual product: sassafras oil. The fragrant liquid comes from the bark and roots of sassafras trees grown in China and South America. Sometimes it's used for fragrance in candles and soaps, although it's most famous for being the key ingredient in traditional root beer recipes.
Robins found a source for sassafras oil and started importing it to Canada, and soon he had a pile of orders. "I thought, 'this is great!'" recalls Robins. "'We must have tapped into a niche market that wasn't being supplied.'"
A few months later, Robins heard a knock at his door. It was the RCMP. The corporal told him that sassafras oil contains large amounts of safrole, a naturally occurring liquid that is used to manufacture MDA or MDMA, better known as the drug ecstasy.
Most ecstasy labs in Canada use safrole as their main ingredient, or primary precursor, in police-speak. Illicit drug chemists spend several days in the lab adding various chemicals like formic acid, hydrochloric acid and industrial grade hydrogen peroxide before they have their finished product: small white pills destined for the streets or for night club dance floors.
Sergeant Doug Culver, head of the RCMP's National Chemical Diversion Program, says Vancouver has more than its fair share of clandestine ecstasy labs: 40% of the laboratories in Canada are located in the Lower Mainland.
"When you walk into place where there's an ecstasy lab, no matter where it is in the building, you smell it instantly," says Culver. "The sassafras oil smells like black licorice, like ouzo. It permeates everything in the room."
Culver says most essential oil businesses selling sassafras have no idea that their product regularly ends up in drug labs. Barb Greenwood, an essential oil seller in Courtenay and the president of the British Columbia Association of Practicing Aromatherapists, said she had never heard about the black market uses for the oil. However, it seems to be a sensitive subject for some aromatherapy retailers. I called an essential oil company in Ontario that advertises on its website that it sells sassafras oil by the drum. The gentlemen insisted he only sells it to legitimate manufacturers who use it to make candles and soap, before abruptly hanging up the phone.
The Canadian government, keen to limit the availability of sassafras oil, put in new regulations last year. Now you have to apply to for a license from Health Canada's Office of Controlled Substances to import, export or sell sassafras oil, as well as other Class A precursors like ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, which are used to make methamphetamine. Sassafras oil is also tightly controlled in the U.S., where the Drug Enforcement Agency warns retailers to keep records, report suspicious orders and "know your customers" or risk facing criminal charges.
After Christopher Robins' visit from the RCMP, he was spooked and decided to get out of the sassafras trade altogether. He's selling his half of the essential oil company to his business partner, who's applying for a license to sell sassafras. This could be a smart business move for Robins' former partner: since the new regulations came into effect, sassasfras oil is harder to come by, and the price of the licorice-scented liquid is on the rise.