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The distinguished chain of Kaya Herb House is known for its high quality medicinal and topical products made from cannabis.

Our Today wanted to know more about the products and what prompted Balram Vaswani, CEO of Kaya, to kick off such an illuminating company and with no delay, he revealed the idea to set up shops in Jamaica.

With Jamaica being one of the five meccas of ganja, meaning the foundation of where ganja came from, among other countries like India and Afghanistan, Vaswani observed that even tourists assumed that, because of Jamaica’s culture, weed was already legal here.

Mostly because the flower is embedded in the island’s way of life.

With this in mind, he asked himself, “How would we ever be able to legally sell ganja in Jamaica?”

Our Today went down memory lane with Vaswani as he took us to year 2013 when he was working at the Marley coffee shop in Colorado, United States.

“I got a first-hand seat when the medical institution moved to recreational marijuana and that was when I decided to sell everything I had and invested in Colorado.”

Risk-taker Vaswani

He continued: “I converted four medical licences for recreational licence. The learning curve I got from there helped create GANJA Inc, which is Ganga from the Ganges River.”

With the lessons learnt in Colorado, Vaswani started lobbying in Jamaica for the decriminalisation of cannabis consumption; it wasn’t until February 6 of 2015 that the Ganja Act changed to decriminalise the use of marijuana.

With this legislative change, Vaswani landed his first two licences in Jamaica.

Initially the idea was to construct and trademark a company offering edibles from a ganja café but, because the legislation was for the decriminalisation of the weed, he had to alter his idea to create an establishment where you could sell legal ganja.

Vaswani’s new idea birthed a chain of Kaya Herb Houses all over Jamaica, which sell medical cannabis products.

Selling legal weed from a medical dispensary meant that there must be a line drawn between recreation and medicinal marijuana usage.

According to Vaswani, there’s a very big difference between the two.

First of all, anything regarding the recreational usage of cannabis is not recognised at all on a federal level, according to United Nations treaties.

Therefore, though Jamaica’s legislation is based 100 per cent on medical use, the ‘big line’ is being able to meet all the legal frameworks of recreation needs like banking, loans and the right taxes and all that stuff associated like in Canada.

The United States doesn’t have the legal framework that Canada has because of the entire country being legal and Jamaica’s banking system is linked with the USA.

He said, “So, it’s a different situation where certain states are recreational versus the entire country being legal, you know, and I think it’s going to be a gradual shift that Jamaica moves from medical to recreational once you see the US moving federally to that level, but for now, we are 100 per cent medicinal”.

The range of the product

In Jamaica, everything cannabis-related is legal, except for edibles.

Despite that fact, the flower which is straight bud ganja can be a primary ingredient for other products such as:

1. Ganja oil: which is in the form of CO2
2. Hash: made from cold water- extraction
3. Kief: which is from the resinous trichomes
4. Topicals: lotions, balms are all CBD-related products for pain relief
5.  Scents: candles, incense and other varieties
6. Hemp merchants: clothing brand for Kaya

Vaswani revealed a little of his plan to help ‘save the world’.

“So you know hopefully by 2025, all our materials and all our production will be hemp-related and be 100 per cent hemp and once we can get the 100 per cent softness, we can go organic,” he told Our Today.

His plan is to make full hemp products from computer bags to laptop bags that are more durable then get into the softer merchandise for t- shirts and lounge pants and more.

For the meantime, weed remains decriminalised in Jamaica, which is completely fine as there are many health benefits when companies like Kaya are established.

Vaswani took to telling Our Today his personal experiences, “I’ve personally witnessed along my journey the illness, epilepsy. Some of the parents or the afflicted had to buy on the black market or try and buy machines and make oil for their kids and stuff like that for having seizures”.

He continued: “And that was my first time experiencing that, so just them being able to come in store and buy CBD or CO2 oil and then you hear the success story that this kid is not having seizures anymore; they go from three months to six months, nine months and to a year”.

He expressed more how the byproducts of marijuana are a great substitute for a lot of illnesses like cancer, as he has seen the afflicted go through constant pain and nausea without eating at all, or others who experience years of pains on a particular part of the body and after using cannabis products like vape pens or a topical product like balms, they eventually start to feel better.

Users start to get their appetites back, some experience pain relief, others experience changes in their mood, leaving them in a happier state.

Shedding more light on the spike in usage of vape pens, Vaswani asked, “I mean, you could imagine how much stress are we all dealing with, the inner tension how much stuff we are holding onto right now and the pandemic?”

He continued: “I think the world is in a state of crisis in terms of healing internally and if we are going to heal and get over everything that is happening, we have to find the right cannabis strain that helps to relax the mind and opening it up and stuff like that in terms of tension and anxiety so many people can realise more after using the vape pen.”

Vaswani, basically stating that users oftentimes realise they have to deal with life instead of running from it, added, “I’ve seen people using this to their benefit to kind of get balanced because of the fear that they’ve had.”

Not to worry, Our Today was assured that there are no health risks linked to Kaya vape pens.

The vape pens are 100 per cent pure and no product is cut short- the oils are straight CO2.

With Kaya’s many locations all over the island giving help to different patients worldwide, the brand is planning on extending its locations to other regional and South American countries.

The regional footprints of Kaya are dependent on the tourist traffic regulations in the different Caribbean countries.

So, countries like St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados which has drafted and issued regulations, Kaya has submitted a licensing form too.

Trinidad is going to pass its regulations and Bermuda is currently working on its draft regulations, so those regional countries are future prospects as well.

For the South American region, Kaya is looking to expand its footprint to Uruguay and Mexico and then eventually over to the European continent.

Alongside its goals, Vaswani revealed that one of his desires is to have Kaya listed on the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE), calling it his original dream.

“Yeah, I think that was really the original dream for Kaya and we actually submitted our documents to JMMB six years ago, but you know it’s very tough for any bank to touch this issue in Jamaica because of the correspondent banking.”

He continued by adding that if marijuana became federally legal in the USA, Jamaica wouldn’t have that correspondent banking issue.

“So, I think, as much as I would want to list in Jamaica, I don’t think it’d be able to. What I’d have to do is think about it and when I can I’ll do a dual list between Canada, which is fully regulated in terms of banking with Jamaica. So, we can create access not only for international but also for local people to invest in what should be theirs.”