Despite What CA Lawmakers Believe, There’s More to Do at 4 A.M. Than Drink
For nearly a decade now, state legislators from California have attempted to push through a bill extending last call times from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. This year is no different—Assm. Matt Haney and Sen. Scott Wiener (both D- San Francisco) have introduced AB 342, which would allow early morning sales on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. On its face, the policy is reckless and only benefits a handful of businesses. Look a little deeper, though, and there’s the kernel of a good idea: what if we could take these leaders’ vision of the all-night party, and tweak it to help the most intoxicated people stay in a safe place from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. or later, without getting them more drunk?
Already California allows for after-hours clubs that do not sell alcohol, though special permitting is required. Only a handful of these clubs operate, although that scarcity also allows them to be hotspots for those not ready to go home. Yet there’s an obvious upside to them: continuing dancing, snacking, or generally socializing for a few hours without having another drink could offset some of the danger from drinking.
Going Out to Bring BAC Down
Long-term harm from drinking accrues over months and years of alcohol’s damage to the body. Short-term harm, however derives from blood alcohol concentration (BAC). Simply put, the more alcohol in the blood, the more likely the negative effects of alcohol will emerge. These include the lack of motor skills that drive traffic accidents and death, the reduced inhibitions that lead to aggression, and the distracted attention that create injuries. Although DUI laws train us to think of 0.08 BAC as a magic threshold under which someone is “safely” tipsy and above which they are drunk, risks from alcohol start rising with the first drink.
But that also means they start declining shortly after the last drink. The rule of thumb holds that the body metabolizes one standard drink of alcohol per hour. While that varies a small amount depending on several factors, there is no magic method for clearing alcohol out of your system rapidly—coffee won’t do it, water won’t do it, exercise won’t do it, greasy food won’t do it. (This is because alcohol is cleared by the liver; all of the aforementioned strategies are based on cycling blood through the kidneys.) The only method that is 100% effective is waiting it out.
This is why there will always be an increase in risk when extending hours. The entire economic argument rests on the idea that bars need to sell more alcohol in order to survive. Yet, because of that steady rate of sobering up, unless bars are selling each patron fewer than one drink per hour, partiers are leaving at least as intoxicated as they would have at 2 a.m., if not more so. If bars are selling fewer than one drink per hour, then a 4 a.m. last call makes no economic sense.
The challenge, then, is this: how do we get bars to stay open an extra two hours with no additional alcohol sold?
Where Everybody Knows Your Name (aka RBS Should Be the… Norm!)
The revenue question is central to a safe late night, because extra hours of operation also require extra outlays to pay staff. These staff do not just serve customers, they are bastions against alcohol-related harm. California has a mandate that bar and nightclub servers undergo responsible beverage service (RBS) training. This training prepares them to intervene with patrons who seem like they’re going to hurt themselves, to de-escalate fights and angry outbursts, and to use common sense to ensure patron wellbeing. As valuable as their training is inside the club, these techniques becomes useless (and potentially put that staff at risk) outside it.
Because alcohol’s effects shift as people sober up—away from the energized and euphoric effects as alcohol first hits the bloodstream, and towards more negative emotions and lower energy as secondary metabolites begin circulating—compassionate oversight from staff can make as big an impact after the last drink is sold as it can while sales are going. Well-trained staff are also crucial for handling the looming threat of alcohol-involved drug overdose, with easy access to Narcan and the knowledge of how to use it.
But bars and clubs are businesses, and a sense of altruism will never be enough to keep staff on absent income. This raises the question of what else can a bartender sell between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. The obvious answers include mocktails—which have become a substantially more lucrative business in recent years—and caffeinated beverages. Another straightforward option would be food sales, which would let people socialize while their bodies clear alcohol while also alleviating a long-standing complaint heard around many California cities: there’s nowhere to eat after 10 p.m. (COVID-era regulations designed to help food trucks and pop-ups operate in coordination with bars can create partnerships for early morning as well.) If these hours are truly in-demand enough to become economic drivers, then expanded cover charges would also help defray the costs.
But that might not be enough. If we want to split the difference—have clubs open late and have late night become safer through gradual sobering and access to trained staff, should we start regarding that final early morning shift as a public good, deserving of public funding?
Waking Up to Safe Mornings
Shifting from an on-sale alcohol license to an off-sale one can be fraught, especially since the temptation for owners to operate in bad faith is strong. Frequently, physical changes to the bar are required, including a complete locking-up of all alcohol as the clock strike 2 a.m., heading off the urge for owners to “sneak” an extra round. If an adequate lock-up criteria is established–potentially including secured cabinets, verifiably disconnected taps, and clearly identifiable alcoholic beverage containers to be bussed when customers are cut off—it will require substantial cash outlay that may discourage many venues. Grants to help secure these areas could lower the barrier to entry for potential 4 a.m. participants.
Overall operating costs could be further offset through tax breaks contingent on maintaining the “sobering up hours”. But imagine something bigger: instead of selling our cities based on the endless alcohol sales, sell them based on having an all-night, crash-free party. Public transit already forms a crucial crash prevention role for people who have been drinking. Imagine extending bus services to serve as shuttles from hotels in other neighborhoods, or even neighboring municipalities. For tourists, it would alleviate any pressure to get in a car when drinking, while giving the sponsoring city a reputation as a place where it’s easy to stay out and easy to get to bed.
Last Call Is the First Step
As it is, the slow march of alcohol through the system means there is no way to embrace safe early morning last calls. 4 a.m. last calls should be stopped in the legislature and the entire concept of leaning on alcohol sales to prop up a rickety alcohol industry scrapped. But the idea of letting people stay out, have fun, and sober up is just getting going. Already, the younger generations seem less interested in drinking, but still interested in going out to socialize.
Rather than simply demand an end to bad ideas, what if we called our representatives and asked them to push for good ones? Make it easier to run an alcohol-free club. Make it simpler to dump the drinks and bring out tater tots and Gatorade. Make the roads safer. Make the early morning less prone to violence. Stop lawmakers from seeing late night only as a tradeoff between empty sidewalks with nowhere to go, and streets full of reckless driving and assault.
If the ideas from Sacramento keep being so dangerous and shortsighted, then it’s time they heard more ideas from the rest of us.
—Carson Benowitz-Fredericks, MSPH
READ MORE about the risks of extended last call times.
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Image via David Yu on Flickr, used under Creative Commons license.
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