Every truck driver on the road knows that if you drink booze and drive, you could land in the clink on a charge of driving under the influence.

But in California’s San Mateo County, you can be arrested for driving under the influence – of kava tea.

Kava tea – sometimes referred to as kava kava tea – is a drink common to the South Pacific and popular among natives of the region’s islands who live here in the United States. According to Kavaroot.com, it is regarded as a stress-reliever. But law-enforcement officials say that when too much is consumed, it acts as a depressant that can impair your ability to drive.

Recent media reports said the county was cracking down on drivers who consumed too much of the bitter-tasting beverage. But news of a crackdown on tea drinkers is, as Mark Twain said, exaggerated, said Morley Pitt, assistant district attorney with the San Mateo County District Attorney's Office.

“There is no crackdown; we are taking cases as they come in,” Pitt said. “We’re not targeting anybody.”

All of the cases in the county have occurred after an officer saw a car moving erratically and pulled the driver over.

“At the time the officer pulls the driver over, the officer has no idea why the driver is driving in a manner that suggests they are impaired,” he said. “If the office believes it’s appropriate, (he) will arrest the driver for driving under the influence.”

Earlier this year, Pitt said, the District Attorney’s Office tried three cases where the cause of that behavior was driving under the influence of kava. But all three defendants were found not guilty. That’s when the office changed its tactics.

“We had used police officers who were trained in drug recognition,” Pitt said. “But they really were never trained in recognition of kava.”

Pitt said kava is not considered a drug. The tea is an “herbal depressant,” he said, with an effect much like valium. If enough of it is consumed, it can slow reflexes and reaction time.

So the DA’s office turned to a professor of pharmacology at the University of California at San Francisco, who explained to the fourth jury what kava could do to a driver. The result: success. The defendant in that case was convicted July 15 of this year.

Now, the DA’s office is prosecuting three more cases of kava-drinking drivers.

However, the county’s roads are not clogged with kava drinkers. Kava DUI cases are still rare, Pitt said, but when they do come up, the DA’s office does prosecute.

It’s not illegal to drink kava, Pitt said. In fact, you can drink some kava tea without being impaired, just as you can with alcohol. But Pitt said he doesn’t encourage it.

“I don’t know how much they can drink,” he said. “It’s just when you drink too much that it causes problems.”

--by Mark H. Reddig, associate editor
mark_reddig@landlinemag.com