A Drop of Alcohol Makes Newsom’s Red Pen Run Dry
California Governor Gavin Newsom closed the books on the 2023-2024 legislative session last week, continuing with last year’s heavy hand by vetoing 183 bills—approximately 18% of the ones delivered to his desk. Yet like last year, his veto pen did not come anywhere near a single alcohol-related bill. Despite the soaring rates of alcohol-related deaths on his watch—up 20% since 2019—Newsom was all too content to buy the line that the only way to save downtowns was to supercharge the product that is hurting those who live there.
Chief among this alarming embrace of unregulated sales were SB 969 and AB 3206. SB 969 (Wiener D-San Francisco) will allow cities to turn bars into alcohol dispensaries, selling mixed drinks directly out the door, without oversight and without accountability. AB 3206 (McKinnor D-Inglewood) similarly seeks to undermine the basic pillars of safe and legal alcohol sales, allowing anyone rich enough to be friends with Clippers owner and tech oligarch Steve Ballmer to ignore last call times.
Yet for every wound, there is a salve. Despite the passage of those two deeply reckless bills, the year was marked by dramatic wins for prevention. Alcohol Justice and the California Alcohol Policy Alliance (CAPA) were able to stop multiple truly dangerous bills, including another from McKinnor that would have greatly increased drinking at airports, as well as Disney’s attempts to expand alcohol sales within their properties. Meanwhile, CAPA provided testimony and support to three Assembly bills from Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) that shone light on drink spiking, an underrecognized risk with truly devastating consequences. All three would be signed into law.
These bills, as well as other bills of interest, are summarized below. Summaries of all tracked bills are available on the Alcohol Justice Legislative Activity page.
The Prevention Average
Alcohol Justice takes positions on every alcohol-related bill that affects public health, positively or negatively. The California Alcohol Policy Alliance (CAPA) targets the most impactful bills, mobilizing over 50 public health, public safety, and community advocacy groups from across California. Every year, Alcohol Justice calculates the “prevention average” for priority bills and compares it to the Major League Baseball batting average leader.
Alcohol Justice
CAPA
The 2024 MLB batting average leader was the Kansas City Royals’ Bobby Witt, at 0.332.
Key Alcohol Bills
SB 969 – The BSIMBY (Bourbon Street In My Backyard) bill.
Like too many bills, SB 969 was sold on a lie. Its author, State Senator Scott Wiener, claimed in front of his colleagues that this would simply allow bars to sell drinks on the sidewalk during parades, when caterers were already allowed to. This was flatly not what this bill does. This bill allows bars to sell directly onto the sidewalk, where patrons will drink while wandering the street. This creates the kind of “party zones” that were, before COVID, restricted to select areas—most notably, New Orleans’ Bourbon St. Now, every city in California can establish these areas. The bill has no requirements for increased public safety presence, for enhanced accountability methods for participating bars, or even for these zones to ban traffic. The statewide explosion of these zones is almost, but not quite, unprecedented. North Carolina passed a similar bill a year ago, and promptly opened a whole series of these zones—disproportionately within Black communities. Some California legislators are promising to do the same.
The scope is unprecedented, but again, we will always have Bourbon St. to look to. The mecca for tourists looking to get plastered features extraordinary levels of violence and property crime, with gunfire frequently claiming the lives of bystanders and bar staff. These echo San Francisco’s own experience—the Castro St. Halloween party zones, which culminated in a 2006 shooting and mass panic. It is a betrayal of leadership that state-level politicians who served in San Francisco during that era and know firsthand the tragedies that can result would blind themselves to the risk that SB 969 would bring more of the same.
The first zones are already set to open later this year in San Francisco. The following year will show the true scope of this cruel and short-sighted experiment to eke more money from alcohol tourism. Advocates on the ground in every city will need to be prepared with the tools to monitor and fight these expansions. Alcohol Justice is busy developing those resources; sign up for the Alcohol Justice eNews for alerts as they roll out.
AB 3206 – the Late Last Calls But Only If You’re Rich bill.
Extending last call times has become an object of obsession for California lawmakers. Sen. Wiener has tried to advance these bills in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2023, and supported his acolyte, Assemblymember Matt Haney, in proposing it again this year. Haney’s bill AB 3195, failed early, but its banner was soon taken up by a different, smaller but uglier 4 A.M. bill. AB 3206, introduced mid-session by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, would allow members of a dues-paying VIP club in the new Clippers basketball arena in Inglewood to purchase alcohol until early in the morning. The bill hid behind its geographical limits—it was a “district” bill, ostensibly affecting just one lawmaker’s area of influence. (In fact, Alcohol Justice’s splash maps show how the consequences from late last times and other policies affecting driving under the influence do not stay confined to just one place.)
But the bill’s passage also relied heavily on the wealth swirling around it. The arena is owned by billionaire oligarch Steve Ballmer, the club is for the enjoyment of the rich VIPs who can pay the membership fees, and the lobbyist who pushed it over the line was one of the same dinner buddies of Gov. Newsom whose embrace of the high life breathed life into the 2021 recall effort. All of this lent it an air of inevitability, even as CAPA members on the ground mobilized to educate residents and nearly stopped it before it made it to the Governor—the bill squeaked through the Senate GO committee by a single vote.
The truth of the matter is, wealth does not protect one from the impact of alcohol. It only lets you buy your way out of trouble afterwards. The bill still threatens to create a wave of inebriated drivers going out on the road in the early morning, potentially hurting themselves and others. And the people they hurt, leaving for the morning shift, were never, ever going to see the inside of that 4 A.M. VIP room.
The bill has passed, but the fight continues. With CAPA’s aid and influence, the residents of Inglewood and neighboring cities will work to bring safety and sense to the early morning.
AB 2375, AB 2389, and AB 2402 – The Spikeproofing Bars bills.
“Drink spiking,” casually but incorrectly referred to as “roofie-ing,” is a hazard associated with alcohol licensees that nags at the edge of regulator consciences. It describes the practice of adding an adulterant to a drink, unbeknownst to the drinker, that enhances the effects of the alcohol. It became infamously connected with rohypnol, the “date rape drug,” but many prescription and illegal drugs can create extreme intoxication and memory loss when mixed with alcohol. Researchers, bar staff, and partygoers know drink spiking occurs, but the estimated incidence varies wildly, from around 5% to over 15%, depending on the survey. A number of myths surround it: that it only happens to women, that it only ever happens in order to perpetuate sexual assault, that if nothing happens besides the spiking, then no harm has occurred. In practice, however, it can happen to men and women, and the experience of being “dosed” in this manner can result in lasting trauma, regardless of what happens afterwards.
With this in mind, Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal introduced a trio of bills intended to curb the practice and provide better support for those who have been victimized. AB 2375 requires bars to provide plastic adhesive covers for cups and glasses on request. AB 2389 creates a clear expectation of compassionate response to customers who have had their drink adulterated. AB 2402 integrates pedagogy around recognizing drink spiking and caring for the victim into the existing California responsible beverage service training requirements. CAPA supported these bills from the start and is proud to see a pervasive but under-recognized source of harm from alcohol licensees identified, confronted, and hopefully, minimized.
AB 2094 – the Get ‘Em While They’re Young bill.
This 2024 bill builds off of Dawn Addis (D-Monterey)’s disastrous 2023 law, which ramped up selling ad space to Big Alcohol on college campuses. So ill-conceived was this bill that in the testimony, the representative from Cal State San Luis Obispo bragged that they would be able to hang these ads in auditoriums that hosted tens of thousands of elementary-, middle-, and high school students. This year, Heath Flora (R-Bakersfield) ran with that, pushing through a similar bill that gave access to advertising at Bakersfield College. Unlike most of the colleges sold to Big Alcohol, however, the majority of Bakersfield College’s own student body is underage—many are literally high school students engaged in enrichment programming. Unfortunately, the industry was willing to pay money for the opportunity to pipe ads directly to teenagers, and that was enough for Flora, his associates, and the Governor to give their approval.
AB 2589 – the Smashed Fashion bill.
California has a formula for when a county is “overconcentrated” with alcohol licenses. According to state law, no licenses can be issued in a region that is overconcentrated except via exceptional measures. As part of the alcohol policy race to the bottom, the exceptionality of those measures keeps getting more and more insipid. With Assemblymember Joe Patterson (R-Rocklin)’s bid for extra licenses in his bar-packed district, the rationale seems to be that not enough drunk shoppers are running over teens. AB 2589 generates 10 additional licenses for the Counties of El Dorado and Placer, providing that they are issued to shopping malls. Yes, shopping malls. The places that, notoriously, people drive to, and where suburban teenagers go to hang out. The argument for them is that, between online shopping and, presumably, teenagers not wanting to get hit by cars, malls are dying. Turning the asphalt seas that surround them into a slow-motion ballet of automotive collisions does not meet everybody’s definition of “alive.” Regardless, the basic truth of responsible regulation is that overconcentration is a warning that an area is about to experience increased harm.
These are only a few of the bills that Alcohol Justice and CAPA have tracked over the past year. The complete list of the 2023-2024 session is available here. As always, we appreciate the supporters and advocates that surround us statewide. Please email us at advocacy@alcoholjustice.org if you would like to be more involved, or if you would like to bring issues in your community to our attention. Thank you for standing with us in 2024, and we look forward to solidarity in 2025.
READ MORE about the California legislature’s obsessive dismantling of protective alcohol legislation.
READ MORE about how dangerous driving flows from communities chasing Big Alcohol bucks to those that try to stay safe.
Image by Atomic Hot Links via Flickr, used under Creative Commons license.