DUI Arrest Over Caffeine? Time to Review These Silly Laws

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here. DUI laws are often inefficient. Mostly because not all drivers react to certain substances like alcohol the same way, and because provoking injury or causing deadly harm to a fellow human being while behind the wheel is already against the law. Now, we have another reason to be skeptical of government’s “driving while under the influence” rules. A recent DUI case in California is catching the media’s attention for the police’s choice to pursue a case involving a driver under the influence of caffeine. Not drugs or alcohol, but caffeine. According to the driver’s attorney, Joseph Schwab was pulled over in August of 2015 and charged with misdemeanor driving while under the influence of stimulants. As he and his attorney prepare to go to trial, the Solano County district attorney’s only evidence is a blood test showing the presence of caffeine in the driver’s system. The motorist was on his way home from work when he was pulled over by a California department of alcoholic beverage control officer who was driving an unmarked vehicle. The official claimed Schwab had been driving erratically. She also said Schwab had cut her off before he was pulled over. During the exchange between the official and the driver, he was given a breathalyzer test that eventually showed a 0.00% blood alcohol level. Nevertheless, he was booked into county jail where his blood was drawn. The toxicology report came back negative for THC, benzodiazepines, cocaine, opiates, carisoprodol (a muscle relaxant), methamphetamine/MDMA, oxycodone, and zolpidem, The Guardian reports. But officials weren’t over yet, sending the sample back for a second laboratory test in Pennsylvania, where they found that only caffeine had been running through the driver’s veins at the time of the arrest. Despite the odd results, charges were brought against the man ten months after the incident, and the only evidence being used is the blood test. But in a statement, the local chief deputy district attorney said that “[t]he charge of driving under the influence is not based upon the presence of caffeine in his system.” When we give the government power to criminalize what we do to our bodies, we also give way to authority abuse, allowing law enforcement to apply the law in an arbitrary way. Instead of relying on the rule of law, we now rely on flawed individuals in the justice system, giving them the power to say who’s to be held accountable. Isn’t it time to put an end to this waste?