Young Living



Young Living is a Utah-based multilevel marketing company which manufactures and hawks essential oils and related nonsense. The company claimed 4 million members and sales of $1.5 billion in 2017.

Young Living products are sold not in stores, but by members who operate as franchisees. Like other multilevel marketing companies, these "independent distributors" are notorious for cult vibes, aggressive sales tactics, and dubious health claims, much of which amounts to medical advice. The vast majority of commissions are paid to about a thousand high-level members; nine-tenths of the rest earn less than a dollar a year selling Young Living products.

Origins
Young Living was founded and led by Donald Gary Young, a self-described "naturopathic doctor" and one-time devotée of Stanley Burroughs, inventor of the so-called Lemonade diet. After at least one conviction for practicing medicine without a license, Young (get it?) moved his "clinic" to Rosarito, Mexico, where he offered quack "detoxifixation" treatments for cancer and lupus, among other diseases. When a Los Angeles Times reporter submitted cat and chicken blood to Young's clinic, he failed to recognized the samples were bogus and diagnosed the "patients" with aggressive cancer and liver disease.

In 1982, Young and his then-wife accidentally killed their newborn daughter during a botched "natural childbirth" procedure. The county coroner, ruling the death accidental, nevertheless stated the child would have almost certainly survived a conventional delivery.

Young began distilling essential oils in the late 1980s and founded Young Living in 1993. Besides selling essential oils, Young Living operated a clinic which dispensed essential oils and other alternative medicine treatments for numerous conditions, including cancer and depression. After a patient developed kidney failure from a Young Living vitamin C treatment, the clinic moved to Ecuador.

Despite literally selling longevity in a bottle, Young died unexpectedly at age 68 after a series of strokes.

Snake oil
Young Living and its distributors have a long and well-documented history of making dubious and false health claims, about essential oils in general and its products specifically. Most incredibly, during an outbreak of Ebola virus in 2014, a Young Living distributor who claims to be a nurse (?!) flatly stated on her blog that "viruses (including Ebola) are no match for essential oils" and that "Ebola virus can not live in the presence" of cinnamon oil or oregano oil. The blog then claimed that several Young Living blends had anti-viral properties and recommended others for fever, bleeding, and "liver support."

The alt-med claptrap is sprinkled with a generous helping of Mormon wackiness for good measure. For example, the company once donated frankincense and myrrh oil to a local Christmas display, claiming rather inexplicably that its extraction process was based on "customs that were practiced during the period of Christ."

The US Food and Drug Administration is not amused, but they've done little besides firing off several angry letters, and though the company has toned down its official marketing materials, individual distributors continue to recommend Young Living products for serious medical conditions. Only one major legal case has gained traction - a 2020 attempt to force it into arbitration failed but it remains ongoing amid venue changes and procedural maneuvers.

Hypocrisy
Young Living makes a big deal of its "Seed to Seal®" policy, "a rigorous quality control standard" that involves "a battery of physical, chemical, and microbiological scientific tests to measure the exact components and properties of our essential oils," all while "sustainably sourcing plants… uplifting local communities… [and] complying with environmental and other laws." Most of their web page on the subject is (surprise, surprise) rather vague and full of unsourced puffery.

However, many of the ingredients in Young Living's oils, such as sandalwood and copaiba, are frequently poached and smuggled, with devastating environmental consequences but few legal ones. In September 2017, Young Living plead guilty to federal misdemeanor charges for procuring illegally-harvested rosewood and spikenard; the company's punishment was a measly $760,000 fine and a pledge to implement changes.

This is all, of course, notwithstanding the idiocy of shipping plants halfway around the world, distilling or extracting them into oil in massive, specialized industrial machines, and selling it by claiming that it's "natural".

Essential External links

 * youngliving.com
 * dgaryyoung.com