DRIVERS DRUNK ON KAVA NEW TARGET FOR POLICE

DUI Conviction Spurs Prosecutors

Emboldened by the first drunken-driving conviction of a kava-drinking
motorist in California -- and only the second nationwide -- San Mateo
County prosecutors are on a crusade to lock up drivers intoxicated by
the herbal brew.

The drive comes as the county's crime lab is teaming up with the San
Francisco medical examiner to become the first on the West Coast to
cook up a kava equivalent to the blood-alcohol test used to jail
drunken drivers.

The unprecedented push is alarming some in the South Bay's
15,000-strong Pacific Islander community, who fear they'll be nabbed
for ingesting the sacred tea central to their cultural rituals and
revelries.

"The legal system is being used to restrict our traditions," said
Chester Palesoo of East Palo Alto, head of the Pacific Islander
Community Center.

San Mateo County Deputy District Attorney Chris Feasel, who won the
conviction, said officials aren't trying to outlaw kava, which is
classified by the Food and Drug Administration as a nutritional
supplement sold to relieve anxiety.

But, said Feasel, "Someone who drinks kava and gets sleepy is
dangerous and shouldn't get behind the wheel."

In California it's against the law to drive a car while impaired by
any substance, whether prescription medicine or merlot. California
Highway Patrol officials estimate kava represents less than 1 percent
of the roughly 1,800 annual DUI arrests in southern San Mateo County.

Feasel said that in the past several years, about a dozen Peninsula
drivers have been pulled over for driving under the influence of kava.
All have been acquitted.

Peni Basalusalu was not so fortunate. The San Bruno man served 30 days
in San Mateo County Jail on a misdemeanor DUI charge after a CHP
officer spotted the 41-year-old weaving between lanes and along the
shoulder of Highway 101 near Woodside Road this summer.

Prosecutors said the Fiji-born Basalusalu had consumed three bowls of
kava at a late-night gathering. When he was pulled over at 1:30 a.m.,
he failed roadside sobriety tests that measure reflexes and visual
alertness.

Scott Newbould, Basalusalu's lawyer, said the man was driving
erratically because he was distracted by the bright lights of a
highway construction zone. He said the CHP couldn't prove how much his
client ingested.

Prosecutors, however, said science was on their side. Feasel said they
won a conviction thanks in large part to a 2003 Australian study that
found that larger doses of kava impaired a person's motor function and
had the same anesthetizing affects as hypnotic drugs like Valium.

Though not classified as a drug by federal health officials, kava is
considered to be a depressant when in concentrated form. Researchers
at Australia's Menzies School of Health Research said the side effects
increase with the potency of the tea, which is made from the root of
the South Sea pepper plant.

But unlike with alcohol, people drunk on kava are often able to think
straight, experts said, which could make them more confident about
getting behind the wheel.

"They may be able to verbally do the alphabet backward," said Cathi
Dennehy, an associate professor of pharmacology at the University of
California-San Francisco, who testified at Basalusalu's trial. "But
if you ask them to touch their nose and walk a line 10 times, they may
not be able to."

Armed with this research, San Mateo County prosecutors are gearing up
to win several more kava DUI cases that are currently headed to trial.
One local man is accused of swerving along the road and slamming into
a parked car. Several others were allegedly weaving at slow speeds
along Peninsula highways.

Prosecutors say Salt Lake City is the only other place to win such a
conviction, when a Tongan man was found guilty in 1996 of driving
under the influence of kava.

Scientists there have concocted a test to help identify kava in a
driver's system -- something scientists in the Bay Area crime lab are
hoping to match.

Surrounded by whirring machines used to analyze cocaine, psychedelic
mushrooms and methamphetamines, Kenton Wong of San Mateo County's
crime lab is trying to create a test that will detect kava in a
fashion similar to the 0.08 blood-alcohol level test -- the legal
limit in California. Officials hope to detect kava in the body and to
define how much will render someone too intoxicated to drive.

Wong is collaborating with the San Francisco Medical Examiner's
Office, which has a high-performance liquid chromatography machine
that can isolate the amount of kava byproducts in urine. They are
seeking to launch the effort by the first of the year.

Pacific Islanders in the South Bay are incensed that kava-drinking
social events could be seen by police as the equivalent of keggers.

Palesoo, of the Pacific Islander Community Center, recalls drinking
the peppery tea from coconut bowls when his father passed along the
title of chief of an American Samoan family to him. He said he is
planning to mobilize community members to insure Basalusalu's
conviction is the last.

"We are citizens," he said. "We want equal justice."

Peter Lynch, a San Mateo County deputy district attorney, said
drinking kava in moderation shouldn't inhibit rituals -- and could
spare others from injury. He hopes the prospect of a maximum $10,000
fine and a month in jail could act as a deterrent.

"There's no law to say you can't have kava," said Lynch. "But if
you are going to drink enough to impair you, just don't go behind the
wheel, take a 4,000-pound piece of metal and hurtle it down the
road."