Essential Oils - Is Young Living A Cult?

I was looking into essential oils the other day for my science Channel and I noticed the same name popping up every time young living over and over every time I found a YouTube video to debunk it was somebody endorsing this company and it just so happens that a reasonably big youtuber we all know and love known as genetically modified skeptic has a personal stake in taking this company down if you aren't subscribed to him by the way you should be really good dude go check out his channel link is in the description so here's the question is young living a cult let's get into it [Music] first let's talk about their company's claims they claim that essential oils can cure all kinds of stuff remember in 2014 when there was this massive Ebola scare Ebola killed a lot of people and it's a really terrible disease but people in Africa were the most susceptible to it because they didn't have fantastic medical care there were all of like three cases in the US a really big problem with Ebola is dehydration there's stuff coming out of both ends of your body at the same time you're losing liquids fast the best way to deal with Ebola is by insuring the infected person stays hydrated but in the area in Africa where all this was going down clean water was kind of hard to come by but don't worry essential oils are here to help and they can do what modern medicine can't in September 2014 the FDA issued a warning letter to young living telling them not to market their products as treatments for cures for Ebola here's an excerpt from the letter this is to advise you that in August 2014 the FDA reviewed websites and social media accounts example Facebook Twitter and Pinterest for several Young Living Essential Oil consultants that your firm refers to as Young Living distributors the FDA also reviewed a 2012-2013 product guide found on your website based on our review the Food and Drug Administration has determined that many of your Young Living Essential Oil Products such as but not limited to thieves cinnamon bark oregano mu power rosemary Myrtle sandalwood eucalyptus blue peppermint yelling yowling frankincense and orange are promoted for conditions that caused them to be drugs under Section 201 G one B of the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act because they're intended for use in the diagnosis cure mitigation treatment or prevention of disease the intended use of a product may be determined by among other things its labeling advertising and the circumstances surrounding its distribution as described below the marketing and distribution of your Young Living Essential Oil Products without FDA approved applications is in violation of the Act so it's basically saying here that they're marketing their essential oils as cures for certain diseases and the moment they claimed it can cure certain diseases it fell under the FDA's whether it can live up to those claims or not now that it falls under their jurisdiction the FDA can put a stop to their production unless they stop making those claims the letter goes on to say that the distributor's market their products as cures for things such as Ebola Parkinson's disease autism diabetes hypertension cancer insomnia heart disease PTSD dementia and MS then they say that those diseases aren't self diagnosed Abell and shouldn't be treated by people who aren't medical practitioners it's a pretty interesting read surprisingly so if you guys want to take a look at the letter then you can find it in the description too I just want to take a minute just sit right there I'll tell you how he became the Prince of a town called bel-air now I'm just kidding I'll save that story for another time I wanted to talk about the way their business is set up before we go any further now I have to be very careful which words I use to describe their sales model because I could actually be sued if I use the wrong words but if you were to chart out their sales force it would have a triangle shape to it here's how it works you link up with a distributor who sells the oils and the accessories like roll-on sticks diffusers that kind of thing at a discounted rate then you take that and sell it to others every time you buy more stuff from the distributor they make money because they're getting it at a discounted rate the more stuff you buy the more the distributor makes until you can become a distributor yourself and buy it in bulk then you have people coming to you to buy stuff at a discounted rate every time they sell something you get a small cut so if you have say five friends and each sell stuff to five of their friends now you're making a ton of money from it it sounds good in practice but there's always somebody on the bottom level who's spending a ton of money on starter kits or diffusers or other worthless junk don't be that bottom guy it's called multi-level marketing and in a system like that there's always somebody at the bottom shelling out money and getting nowhere I'm looking at a distributors website right now and she pitches it like it's the perfect system no employees no selling no inventory no shipping be your own boss work at your own pace all that junk at best that spin at worst it's outright lies I'm sure you guys have heard of Mary Kay the business model is set up in a similar way to Mary Kay's business model they have different levels of distributors if you sell a certain amount of product then you get this or that prize like a pink Mary Kay car in reality they can afford to offer that as a prize in the first place because they give so few of those things out have you ever seen a pink Mary Kay car on the road I think I've seen one or two if it was really such a great deal where everybody wins you'd see them all over the damn place and not only are you buying into a triangle-shaped sales force you're also peddling a product that does real actual harm to people's lives by claiming to do things it can't actually do as I was saying they have different distributor levels in Young Living you've got star senior star executive silver gold platinum diamond crown diamond and royal crown diamond each level is reached by selling a certain amount of product so star is a hundred PV or five hundred Oh G V P V stands for personal volume and it's basically like reward points it's roughly one PV for each US dollar spent but the PV value is the same around the world because it's based on how much product you order so if you're ordering in a currency other than US dollars it'll obviously diverge from the one to one ratio Oh G B stands for organization group volume which means if you get a bunch of resellers to give you like a hundred dollars each you can order product at a discounted rate if you do that you have to sell $500 worth instead of just a hundred to be star level although there's a pipe here between the hundred PV and the 500 a GB so actually I think you might have to order $500 for your group and an additional 100 worth for yourself that means any profit you make from the group is probably cancelled out by the hundred you have to spend on product to reach star level to be senior star you have to get a hundred PV or about a hundred dollars worth of personal product and $2,000 for the group rate executive is 100 PV and 4,000 OGP and silver is a hundred PV 10000 o GP and silver is a hundred PV 10000 oh gee B and a thousand PG V which is a personal group volume not only that but you apparently also have to sell two legs of 4,000 ogv each I don't know what a leg is I tried finding it but it's a complete mess this process is overly complicated and designed to make people think you can make more money quicker and easier than you actually can the next level is gold and for that you have to sell a hundred PV 35,000 Oh G V 1000 pgv and three legs of 6000 OGB each oh wait a minute I think I get it now legs like legs of a triangle you have to sell six thousand dollars worth of product to three different groups wow they even describe it as a triangle like structure on their own website amazing anyways long story short it goes all the way up to royal crown diamond which is a hundred PV 1.5 million ogv 1000 p gb and six legs of 35,000 ogv each aside from the supernatural belief in the oils the employees have an almost supernatural view of the company The New Yorker interviewed a diamond level distributor which at that point is pretty much at the top of the triangle here's what they said Young Living is freedom spiritual freedom relationship freedom incredible financial freedom a diamond level distributor said at a young living panel diamond level distributors earn a median monthly income of $32,000 she told the audience that she had built her oils business while working up to 60 hours a week as a television anchor and homeschooling her special needs child there's nothing holding you back but yourself we all have the same oils we all have the same 24 hours in the day the only ones that don't make it to Diamond are the ones that give up anybody in this room can do it now that's interesting so I looked up what they make in the numbers I found from a distributors website said that silver makes 25,000 per year but the New Yorker turned up thirty two thousand per year for Diamond level if that's true that would mean that silver level probably makes almost nothing but yeah that sounds like propaganda if I've ever seen it here's another quote from The New Yorker on another panel the featured speaker was a tan woman in a white dress and strappy gold sandals as a royal crown diamond I work only four hours a day I have a personal chef my chef is right here she said pointing into the audience and I am so blessed that's what happens when you get to this level you get blessed with these things when I wake up I don't look at the internet I go outside I swim every day I didn't always have that luxury but as you advance you get to treat yourself remember at this point you have to basically be at the very top of the triangle the website lists a single current royal crown diamond in the entire company no crown diamonds and there are two sets of diamonds listed apparently three people working together in one party and three working in another party I think it's kind of hard to tell because of how they listed the names anyways the point is it's absolutely impossible for everybody in the company to be at even the silver level which is where you start making even a little bit of money somebody is gonna be on the bottom so let's talk about the company's questionable history and their history of questionable employees and decisions they were founded in 1992 by Donald Gary Young born July 11th 1949 he opened a quote-unquote health clinic in Washington in 1982 ten years before his company was really born that'll be important in a minute for now let's talk about his personal history he says he grew up in a cabin in Idaho with a dirt floor and no running water his highest level of verified education is his graduation from high school in 1967 when he was 24 he was working as a logger and a tree fell on him and caused a number of injuries including but not limited to a ruptured spinal cord he went into a coma when he woke up doctors told him he'd never walk again here's where the story kind of Forks The Cure varies from story to story across different sources but he says after two suicide attempts he decided to drink nothing but water and lemon juice and after 253 days he could walk again in 1982 he and his wife at the time tried to deliver a child in a whirlpool bath in their afro mentioned Washington health clinic their daughter died after spending an hour underwater no charges were brought against them but the coroner said he believed she would have lived if she had been delivered in a more conventional way in 1983 Young was arrested for practicing medicine without a license who's what the court documents said unlawful practice of medicine committed as follows the defendant Donald Gary young in Spokane County Washington on or about February 24th 1983 then in there being did then and their offer to undertake to diagnose advise or prescribe for a human physical condition or offer to penetrate the tissue of another human being by means as follows offering to deliver a baby of another person by offering to treat another purse for cancer and to detect the presence of cancer in another by means of a blood sample which he would draw by a blood test which he would interpret and by offering to determine the nutritional needs of another person during pregnancy by drawing blood and interpreting the results of a blood test the defendant at such time not having a valid Unruh vocht license to practice medicine weird descriptions I can only imagine it was a weird situation here's how those court documents came to be around 1988 in his California clinic an undercover agent submitted a sample of her blood with a fictitious male named for a blood crystallization test also known as a live blood cell analysis Young told her that she had prostate cancer with cells that could act in a potentially aggressive manner now for those of you who don't know women don't have prostates that is fantastic I'm so glad to hear that they actually had undercover agents working on this case hopefully they still do because obviously this dude is obsessed with peddling his brand of pseudoscience on people at the expense of their lives in 2000 he opened the young life research clinic in Springville Utah and of course what else would you expect he treated everything from anxiety to cancer with alternative therapies like essential oils the clinic had some very questionable doctors on staff one of which was a pediatrician named Sherman Johnson he had just had his medical license reinstated after having lost it because a woman told him she had been injected with cancer by gay doctors and witches he treated her quote/unquote cancer which killed her since the only illness she actually had was multiple personality disorder actually there's speculation in the psychology community that multiple personality disorder might not even be real but still not personally convinced but at any rate the woman had something deeply wrong with her and he killed her he faced manslaughter charges and up to 15 years in prison over it now don't get me wrong I don't think Redemption is impossible they saw fit to reinstate his medical license he has to work but the fact that young living hired him should show that they're looking for people who are willing to break free from medical ethics and standards to conform to what they felt was right not what science says is right in fact they're pretty open about the fact that they distrust traditional medical treatment and practices they think essential oils can cure cancer after all in 2005 a young life Clinic patient sued them for an overdose of vitamin C the woman almost died from kidney failure as a result of the overdose they closed the clinic and opened a new one in Ecuador a ton of famous people of endorsed essential oils from Alex Jones to Gwyneth Paltrow claiming they have some kind of special healing effect there will always be a charlatan out there trying to take advantage of people you find that kind of thing in religion all the time they're looking for a way to take advantage of people in a vulnerable emotional state but young living goes a step beyond a simple multi level marketing setup like Mary Kay they're actually making real supernatural claims about their products they're actually killing people at least Mary Kay is just leaving them destitute so here's the question is it a cult in situations like this I'd compare it to the bite model the model created by Steven asan to determine if something is a cult or not I don't have time to go through the whole thing so let me just highlight the points I think it hits they promote dependence and obedience to a high degree by pushing you to buy their products and cure all your illnesses with essential oils they modify behavior with rewards and punishments to a lesser degree they have this whole reward set up silver gold diamond on and on they definitely regulate what and how much you eat and drink they exploit you financially they instill black and white us versus them good versus evil thinking by telling you that modern medicine is out to get you and essential oils are the only way they change your identity to a small degree by turning you into the salesman they want you to be and by making you heavily rely on essential oils for every part of your life they definitely use loaded language and cliches to stop complex thought to a lesser degree they teach thought stopping techniques to prevent critical thought to a lesser degree they reject rational analysis critical thinking in doubt they deliberately withhold and distort information they divide information into insider versus outsider doctrine especially by vilifying modern medicine they generate and use propaganda by lying about what their essential oils can do for you they instill irrational fears or phobias of questioning or leaving by telling you that essential oils are the best cure for ailments and modern medicine is trying to poison you you especially see this a lot with people like Alex Jones telling you the government is spraying chemicals in the air and even putting chemicals in the water that turned the friggin frogs gay Young Living has that same kind of culture they shower you with praise and attention called love-bombing it is a high-pressure sales force after all much like Mormon missionaries they shun you if you disobey or disbelieve but I don't think that's really an operation of the company I think it's more a part of the culture either way it happens and that counts and they definitely teach that there's no happiness or peace to be had outside the group overall looking at the company from the outside I'd say it's a cult-like mentality but I don't think I'd call it a cult I think the leaders inspire fanaticism in the sales force and they even promote supernatural beliefs about their product but I'm not gonna call it a cult right now I'm willing to be convinced otherwise but taking the bite model into consideration I'm just gonna call it a cult-like mindset which is just as bad in many ways another honorable mention for a cult-like mind set would be the Flat Earth philosophy if you could call it that anyway so that's all I've got for you check out my video on essential oils on my Science Channel it just released two days ago also check out my podcast where I read Jehovah's Witness literature and talk about current events and things pretty interesting stuff don't forget to follow me on patreon and all social media and check out the secret link of the day thanks for watching guys [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Telltale

Views: 61,842

Rating: 4.9234004 out of 5

Keywords: youtube, video, telltale, telltail, young living, essential oils, is young living a cult, cult, multi level marketing, mlm, pyramid scheme, sales force, bite model, lavender, oil, grapefruit, cancer, cure, anxiety, diffuse

Id: cpP--5qCBrs

Length: 17min 52sec (1072 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 18 2018