Where to buy kava in the United Kingdom (and is it legal?)

· 5 min read

By the kava.fyi editorial team · Last updated:

Kava in the United Kingdom

The honest answer up front: kava is banned as a food in the United Kingdom. Anyone searching for where to buy it should know that before anything else, because it changes what "buying kava" actually means here compared with most of the rest of Europe.

This guide sets out the legal position with the primary statutory sources, then lists which of the vendors kava.fyi tracks actually state that they deliver to UK addresses. It does not recommend importing a banned food, and nothing here is medical advice. No vendor has paid for placement.

Legal status in the United Kingdom

Kava is banned as a food in the United Kingdom. The Kava-kava in Food (England) Regulations 2002 (S.I. 2002/3169), made on 18 December 2002 and in force from 13 January 2003, prohibit the sale, possession for sale, offer, advertisement for sale, and importation into England of any food consisting of or containing Kava-kava, defined as the plant, or part of the plant, or an extract of it, belonging to the species Piper methysticum. Food caught by the regulations can be treated as unfit for human consumption and seized and destroyed. Equivalent regulations were made for Scotland the same year, the Kava-kava in Food (Scotland) Regulations 2002 (S.S.I. 2002/523), extending the same prohibition north of the border. State this plainly: it is not legal to sell or import kava as a food anywhere in the UK.

The same year, a separate instrument dealt with kava as a medicine. The Medicines for Human Use (Kava-kava) (Prohibition) Order 2002 (S.I. 2002/3170) prohibited the sale, supply and importation of medicinal products containing kava-kava UK-wide, with an exception for products holding a UK marketing authorisation, certificate of registration or traditional herbal registration. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has said that applications for a traditional herbal registration or marketing authorisation involving kava can still be submitted and would be assessed for safety on their own merits, but no such product is in general retail as a result.

Both instruments followed a 2001 expert assessment that found the risk of liver toxicity associated with kava was unacceptable relative to its benefits, and a 2005 review by the same expert working group concluded the prohibition remained justified and proportionate. Neither instrument has been revoked. Separately, kava is also not in the EU's Union list of authorised novel foods under Regulation (EU) 2015/2283, the retained-law equivalent of which continues to govern novel food authorisation in Great Britain, so even outside the specific kava instruments it has no route to lawful sale as a food ingredient here.

Where to buy (ships to the United Kingdom)

Because kava is banned as a food in the UK, this section works differently from kava.fyi's other country guides. Some EU-based vendors will still accept and dispatch orders to UK addresses; that is a shipping capability, not a statement that importing kava into the UK is lawful. Anyone in the UK ordering from the vendors below would be importing a food that the regulations above prohibit, and a parcel can be seized at the border regardless of where it was dispatched from. kava.fyi is not recommending this route; it is reporting, from the same vendor data used for every other country guide, which vendors state UK delivery on their own sites. None of them pay to be listed, and they are ordered alphabetically.

Kavaha and Captain Cook's Kava, the other two vendors in kava.fyi's EU vendor data, state EU-wide delivery only, with no mention of UK addresses on their own shipping pages, so they are not listed here. For a running comparison of prices across all vendors kava.fyi tracks, see the product and price list; it does not filter by whether a vendor is willing to ship to a country where the product is prohibited.

What to look for

If you are outside the UK and this guide has reached you by mistake, or if you are researching kava's chemotype and quality markers rather than the UK's rules specifically, the same general checks apply anywhere kava is lawfully sold. Look for noble kava varieties rather than tudei or two-day varieties, since noble cultivars have the longer history of safe traditional use; see kava.fyi's guide to cultivars. Traditional grind, micronised powder and instant or soluble extract differ in preparation time and strength; the preparation guide covers each. A published third-party certificate of analysis for kavalactone content and contaminants is one of the few objective quality checks available to a buyer. See the effects guide for what kava does and does not do. One health note applies wherever kava is used: it should not be combined with alcohol, and anyone taking medication metabolised by the liver should speak to a doctor or pharmacist first, because of the shared metabolic pathway.

Kava bars in the United Kingdom

kava.fyi's venue map does not currently list any kava bars in the United Kingdom. See the full map for documented venues in other countries.

Sources

  1. The Kava-kava in Food (England) Regulations 2002 (S.I. 2002/3169)
  2. The Kava-kava in Food (Scotland) Regulations 2002 (S.S.I. 2002/523)
  3. The Medicines for Human Use (Kava-kava) (Prohibition) Order 2002 (S.I. 2002/3170)
  4. European Commission: Novel Food status catalogue
  5. Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 of the European Parliament and of the Council on novel foods