Woman blames positive drugs test on Peruvian Coca tea

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2004

CHICAGO (AFP) — Charmaine Charmelo-Garrido says she never got high drinking mate de coca, the Peruvian tea made from the leaves of the coca plant, so it came as something of a shock when she failed a random drug test.

But it was even more of a shock when she was fired by the law enforcement agency that she had worked for for 11 years, citing the fact that she had tested positive for cocaine.

"It took me two weeks to figure out why I had tested positive," the former investigator with Cook County Sheriff's Department in Chicago said, recalling the traumatic events of late 2000.

Charmelo-Garrido insists that it was the cocaine metabolites in the Peruvian pick-me-up which showed up on the test, and that she had no idea the coca tea had active ingredients in it....