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Honolulu Lite
I'M not sure what they call it when someone is loaded on kava, that muddy, numbing root concoction that is gaining popularity as a party substance. It's not called being drunk or shnockered. You don't get "high" on kava, the effect is the opposite. The term "wasted, dude" has been claimed by the pakalolo crowd. Those high on ecstasy, the drug of choice for tattooed, belly-button-pierced ravers, have their own words to describe their mental glitch. Ban driving doped,
dumb or drowsyBut we've got to come up with a word to describe the kava buzz so that mothers across the country can get mad and use it to describe people who drive vehicles after ingesting kava.
I've never had kava, but I know people who have, mostly in Guam and Micronesia, where there are so few diversions that inhabitants long ago took to digging up roots, pounding them into mush and drinking whatever resulted.
The beta test period on the drinking of smashed root juice must have been interesting. There likely were many, many sore tummies before someone came across the root that gave one the sensation of having been struck with an animal tranquilizer dart.
Kava puts your tongue to sleep, then your throat, then, well, you. The world slows down. What do you call it? I'm kava'd, dude.
THE reason this comes up is because state lawmakers, always looking for new laws to make, want to pass a law against driving while under the influence of kava. I guess you'd call it DUIK, although that looks like it sounds like a drop of oil landing in a puddle.
Maybe it would work. Let's see ... Mothers Against DUIK Drivers? That's redundant. Mothers Against Kava Ingestors Who Pilot Automobiles? Mothers Against Smashed Root Muck Abusers? See, nothing works.
If you knew how many people were killed or injured by kava drinking drivers every year, you'd be way ahead of 99.9 percent of everyone else. Because, to be brutally honest, kava drinkers are not exactly involved in a campaign of terror on our roads. Kava drinkers mostly nap. True, some have napped while driving (NWD) but so have a lot of people who just don't get a good night's sleep.
Which is the point. We don't need another law making driving after drinking a certain substance a crime. My feeling is that we don't even need laws making driving after drinking alcohol a crime.
Hold it, mad mothers, before you start erecting the scaffolding to lynch me, hear me out. The campaign against drinking drivers has saved many lives. My point, however, is that there ought to be laws making it a crime for people to drive who aren't in any condition to drive. Period. I don't care if they are on alcohol, kava or Vick's Vapor Rub. There are a lot of people who are incapable of driving who haven't drunk a drop of whisky or tree root gunk and a couple of them almost ran me off the road yesterday.
If we depended more on the laws against driving while impaired, no matter what is impairing you, the highways would be safer. And enforcement would be easier. You make the driver take a dexterity test to see if he or she has the motor and mental skills to skipper a 2,000-pound mass of motorized metal and if they don't, you bust 'em. No breath tests, no drug tests, no blood tests. Just a coordination test. Video taped, so the cops have something funny to sell to Fox television.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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