Sounds far out. In reality, Shayan and his colleagues are more P. T. Barnum than Timothy Leary. As Shayan acknowledges, Herbal Ecstacy’s effects are much subtler than its packaging–and far less dramatic than those of its illicit namesake. “We’re selling the concept of ecstasy,” he explains. Shayan claims his company controls 90 percent of the market, having peddled more than 150 million pills – which retail for $2 to $3 apiece–in four years. His brand has never been linked to a death, Shayan says–a claim that apparently is true. Nevertheless, NEWSWEEK has learned that California health regulators began investigating the company, and others like it, several months ago. Not that controversy fazes Shayan. “We’re squeaky clean,” he insists. The pleasant, long-locked CEO has been entertaining a media parade since the FDA began threatening action against ephedra-based pseudodrugs like Herbal Ecstacy. Shayan claims sales are up by 25 percent since the saber rattling started. “We’d like to thank the FDA,” he says, smiling.
Born in Tehran and raised in Los Angeles, Shayan says he left school and home at 15, cutting his marketing teeth as a promoter on L.A.’s club scene. Noticing that club hoppers were fueling all-night dancefests with the designer drug Ecstasy, he and some pals had an idea. “We thought, God, if we could come up with an alternative product like that that was safe, legal and natural, there would be a huge market for it,” he recalls. They ran across a group of herbalists who had been experimenting with mildly psychoactive herbs. “These were brilliant guys scientifically, but they didn’t have it as far as marketing,” he says. Enter Shayan. Ads in High Times magazine and elsewhere helped sell a purported 500,000 10-pill packages in the company’s first weeks.
Now Shayan and his company drive mainstream herbalists nuts. “I don’t consider them part of the industry,” says Michael Q. Ford, executive director of the National Nutritional Foods Association, a trade group for supplement makers. “God knows we’d like to see this company out of business.” Shayan calls it sour grapes. “We’ve got a dynamic idea. We’ve got intense marketing,” he says. “They can only get $5.95 for 10 pills. We get $3 per pill.” Shayan says his pills, made somewhere “in the United States,” cost him less than 60 cents apiece. “We’re way overpriced,” he volunteers, then rethinks. “I take that back. We’re the best, and it costs more to buy us.”
Shayan insists ephedra is safe if taken in recommended doses. Nonetheless, Global has released a reformulated “Herbal Ecstacy 2” that substitutes kavakava root, described in one textbook as “a mild narcotic, a soporific, a diuretic and a major muscle relaxant.” Shayan’s excited. “Kavakava is the next big thing,” he says. “We think it can be as big as coffee.” What’s more, he promises, Global will release “40 new products within 60 days.” As P. T. Barnum might have figured it, Shayan should have at least 86,400 new customers by then.
