News of Luckin’s new baijiu-infused coffee beverage spread around the world like wildfire last week, and it did not take long until the inevitable happened; a driver caught over the influence claiming the drink was responsible. But it happened in our very own Nanjing.
Luckin Coffee launched its new drink on 4 September, through a cooperation with Kweichow Moutai in which the baijiu producer hopes to bring in a new, younger generation of drinkers.
And drivers, it would perhaps seem, as Nanjing Daily reported this morning, 14 September.
It was at approximately 23:00 on 8 September when Nanjing Traffic Police inspected a car registered to the city of Dongguan in Guangdong Province. That was at the Heye Shan Service Area on the G4221 Shanghai–Wuhan Expressway as it makes its way through Nanjing’s Lishui District.
The driver, surnamed Xu, was found to have a blood-alcohol content of 21mg/100ml, sufficient to reach the standard for driving under the influence.
Yet, Xu coloured the issue by saying he had been drinking Luckin’s new baijiu coffee and that it was responsible for his high blood-alcohol content.
Later however, Xu admitted that he had also drank two glasses of draft beer in Changshu of Suzhou City at around 14:00 that day. He explained that he had heard from his friends he would nevertheless be safe to drive in in 4 hours, so he waited until the evening to drive back.
In the end, Xu will face a fine of ¥1,000 for driving a non-commercial motor vehicle after drinking alcohol, his driver’s license will be deducted 12 points and he shall be suspended from driving for 6 months.
The Luckin latte’s alcohol content is in fact less than 0.5 percent. Our inebriated driver would have had to drink so much of the stuff to be over the driving limit that he would have been sick from the coffee, not the alcohol.
