Every weekend the men gather, sitting cross-legged on 
woven-grass mats in East Palo Alto garages and across 
the Bay Area. They come to gossip, play music, pray, 
raise money. And the lubricant for their conversation 
is kava, a herbal brew made from a South Seas pepper 
plant that relaxes them.

But it was just such a gathering that got Taufui Piutau 
in trouble. After a kava klatch last summer, he was 
driving home when the California Highway Patrol pulled 
him over and charged him with driving under the influence 
of the herb that is ubiquitous in his homeland of Tonga.

The case, the first of its kind in California and one 
of few in the United States, has angered many Bay Area 
Pacific Islanders who believe there is nothing wrong 
with getting behind the wheel after a few cups of kava.

``It's a serious waste of the county's assets to be 
prosecuting kava cases,'' said Piutau's lawyer, Scott 
Ennis, ``if there's no general knowledge that it's 
something unsafe to do.''

The prosecutor in the case disagrees.

Full story at San Jose Mercury News