Kava-Drinking
p. 19 · Read in the full issue
Is It a Harmful Practice?
MR. A. J. VOGAN, F.R.G.S., etc., who has just returned from Fiji, writes on the subject of Kava-drinking, which he describes as among the weirdest of poor humanity’s drug-taking habits. Mr. Vogan, incidentally, raises the interesting point of whether Kava, made in the modern fashion —i.e., by being crushed and not chewed —is not definitely more harmful now than in the old days: Kava probably entered Fiji from the East some 500 years ago. Strange as is often the ignorance of white folk regarding the natural resources, habits of the native population, etc., of the particular island of their location, nothing is so puzzling as the profound absence of information relative to one of the commonest of occurrences — the imbibing of this liquid, which is in dulged in by little coteries of business-men, and otherwise blameless folk in certain shops, and even in their homes.
The Encyclopaedia Britanica says of it: “Kava, an intoxicating liquor, made from the Piper Methepheum. The leaves (?) are chewed, and placed in a bowl where coco nut milk or water is stirred into it. It has a muddy, cafe-au-lait appearance, and Is of a greenish hue. The taste of liquid is at first sw r eet, and then pungent and acid.
Intoxication follows in about thirty minutes. The drunkenness produced by Kava is of a melancholy, silent and drowsy character. Excessive drinking produces skin diseases.
“The active principle of the beverage is a poison of an alkaloidal nature. It exists in the form of a glucose; and, by the pro cess of chewing, this glucose is split up by one of the ferments in the saliva into free alkaloid and sugar. But the chewing pro cess being repugnant to most white-folk, what they swallow is not Kava, as it has not gone through the above necessary chemical changes.”
The pseudo-kava supplied, then, to these coteries is apparently made attractive by the addition of certain chemicals, including certain of those that one reads about in Wallace’s “The Flying Squad,” and an ex pert in the Agricultural Department told me that it was really a matter worthy of police investigation.
Mr. A. H. Phillips, headmaster of Queen Victoria Memorial School, Fiji, returned to Suva by the Monterey on September 24. For over 12 months he had been absent from the Colony in America and England studying educational methods, under a Rockefeller Fellowship.