Making Honey-Suckers Out Of People

My wife and I are visiting a public garden not too far from where we live. My parents are with us. On the day we visit, there’s a family event happening with a range of activities, one of which includes a tea-tasting in the gift shop, which is next to the restaurant.

We head to the restaurant for lunch, and then afterward, my wife and my mum want to have a look around the gift shop, so they walk in while my dad and I loiter at the entrance to wait for them.

The lady running the tea-tasting asks if they want to taste any of her teas, which they don’t, although my wife is interested to know what teas this woman has. She starts showing them to my wife, explaining the ingredients, and so on.

Woman: “This one’s got [ingredients] in it; that’s good if you want to relax. This other one is good for concentration because it has [other ingredient].”

She sees my wife looking at a brightly-coloured tea box.

Woman: “Ah! Now that’s got honeysuckle in it. That wee one will cure cancer.”

She’s about to talk about another tea when my dad speaks up. He’s a retired doctor and rightly gets angry when he hears people giving questionable medical advice. He walks over to the woman’s kiosk.

Dad: “Excuse me? You can’t say that!”

Woman: “Pardon?”

Dad: “You can’t claim that honeysuckle tea cures cancer! I’m a retired doctor and I can tell you that, without evidence from an extensive clinical trial process, it’s illegal to claim that tea will cure cancer!”

Woman: *Blushing* “Oh! Okay. I’ll just put this away, then…”

She grabbed the box of honeysuckle tea and stowed it away in a drawer underneath her kiosk. My wife and mum turned and walked out of the gift shop, and we all headed off for a walk, with my dad telling us about how dangerous it is for people to make statements like that.

I’m not medically trained but I do have to agree with him. I wonder how many other people she’d said this to. She was probably caught off guard to meet someone who actually knew what they were talking about.