Alcohol Justice monitors state and federal legislative activity (including budget proposals) in five alcohol policy areas: Taxes, Alcopops/Dangerous Products, Advertising, Deregulation, and .05 BAC.
When a majority of state legislatures are in session, we conduct updates every 1-2 weeks; at other times, we update the information every 2-3 weeks. Each page includes current bills.
Please consult your own state legislature’s website for the most current and accurate information.
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CALIFORNIA LEGISLATIVE POSITIONS
Alcohol-related legislative activity in California, including bills and budget proposals.
2024 Legislative Session
Click the link below to submit a letter to the California state legislature
Submit Position Letter
Click bill # for full text.
For copies of Alcohol Justice or CAPA position letters, please email our legislative staff.
PAST YEARS LEGISLATION SUMMARIES. 2024 Assembly Bills
AB 1940
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: beer returns.
Permits retailers to return purchases of seasonal beers to wholesalers in exchange for equal amounts of non-seasonal beers of equivalent value from the same manufacturer.
Author(s): Villapudua (D-Stockton)
AJ Position: WATCH – There is no forecasted public health benefit from forcing retailers to push skunked Christmas ale well into June.
Position Letters:
AB 2069
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Sale of soju and shochu.
Allows domestically produced soju and shochu–Korean and Japanese spirits–to be sold as wines by off-sale licensees.
Author(s): Gallagher (R-Chico)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – “Category creep” is a constant threat with novel (or at least, novel to U.S. palates) alcoholic products. Much like producers of the high-alcohol, heavily flavored cocktails in a can would like to see them sold as beers in corner stores, producers of the high-alcohol (typically around 50 proof) soju and shochu would like to get their products in beer-and-wine licensees (which include many corner stores). However, one look at common restaurant menus shows that this is probably not a wine as we generally consider it; for the most port, soju and shochu forms the alcoholic base of a cocktail, since it is relatively unflavored and on the ABV border of the two categories. This makes it functionally a distilled spirit. There is no compelling reason to move it into wine stores except that wine stores can sell it as a higher-ABV exception to the more staid wines, sakes, etc., particularly since California does not have a particularly arduous limit on distilled liquor off-sale licenses.
Position Letters:
AB 2094
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverage control: public community college stadiums: City of Bakersfield.
Allows for alcohol sales at the stadium attached to Bakersfield College.
Author(s): Flora (R-Bakersfield)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – Generally speaking, the proliferation of alcohol sales in colleges should be a source of concern, since colleges have a large contingent of underage students, and alcohol is a prime source of injury and mortality for young adults. For Bakersfield College, this is even more egregious–the demographics of the school are over 50% underage, including many high school students engaging in enrichment programming. Stadium sales are a well-described source of additional harm, and the younger the victim is, the more severe that harm. Colleges should not be dependent on alcohol sales. Colleges full of 18-year-olds shouldn’t even be considering it.
CAPA Position: OPPOSE
Position Letters:
AB 2174
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: beer caterer’s permit.
Allows any licensed beer manufacturers in California to also serve alcohol at up to 36 events per year.
Author(s): Aguiar-Curry (D-Davis)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – This bill blatantly violates the concept of three tiers by increasing the opportunities for manufacturers to engage in direct retail service. By making every single manufacturer also a retailer, this bill paradoxically creates an avenue for megaproducers to instantly dominate any situations which call for a short-term permit. This would not only reduce small producer’s ability to use these permits, it would simply eviscerate independent alcohol caterers, who engage in a much safer model by virtue of a) reducing producer market domination and b) raising the floor price of alcohol.
Position Letters:
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverages control: neighborhood-restricted special on-sale general licenses.
Grants an additional 10 licenses to specified neighborhoods in San Francisco, allows a greater concentration of alcohol outlets in those neighborhoods, and removes any injunction against those new licensees delivering cocktails-to-go.
Author(s): Ting (D-San Francisco)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – San Francisco is already the single most overconcentrated county in a state where every legislator is desperately hitching their urban development wagon to the Budweiser clydesdales. This bill updates a recent bill that blew through the on-sale cap by 30 licenses, adding an additional ten. The argument is that these additional licenses are necessary for the prosperity of overlooked neighborhoods in the south and southwest of the city. At the same time, city leaders are decrying the “doom spiral” that includes the closing of bars, restaurants, and nightclubs on the north and east sides. At some point, it gives the impression that city leaders are trying to caulk a paper dam with sugar, but regardless, overconcentration of alcohol licenses is clearly a factor in increasing both acute and chronic alcohol harms within a neighborhood. If a full bar is the only way to save a restaurant on Ocean Ave., clearly the city has failed the neighborhood in profound ways that alcohol can only help its residents briefly forget.
Position Letters:
AB 2375
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: on-sale general public premises: drink lids.
Requires all type 48 licenses to make available, at or near cost, adhesive lids for customers to put over drinks, greatly reducing the odds that they are victims of drink spiking.
Author(s): Lowenthal (D-Long Beach)
AJ Position: SUPPORT – drink spiking, the covert addition of a drug to a person’s alcoholic beverage, is an underrecognized and underreported source of harm for patrons of bars and clubs. Despite the popular interpretation that it is a form of sexual predation on women, in reality all genders have reported it happening, and the intention isn’t always assault. Victims report trauma even if the event does not result in any further assault. This bill offers a simple, straightforward, and low-burden way for people to protect themselves and is part of an anti-spiking package proposed by Lowenthal. Note that an Assembly amendment removed Type 47 licenses from the requirement. While we understand why, say, Saison would probably not need lids, some nightclubs are able to operate under a restaurant, not bar, license and this would leave them unobligated. This warrants future surveillance of such “morphing” Type 47s.
CAPA Position: SUPPORT
Position Letters:
AB 2378
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverage control: licensing exemption: apprenticeship program for bartending or mixology.
Creates a condition under which bartending apprenticeship programs can serve beverages for tasting.
Author(s): Calderon (D-City of Industry)
AJ Position: WATCH – After discussion with the sponsors of the bill, the conditions under which this “educational alcohol” is provided seem to actually more stringent than other existing exemptions under which this program could have been run. So long as it does not apply to anyone under 21, we maintain no position.
Position Letters:
AB 2389
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: on-sale general – eating place and on-sale general publicpremises: drug reporting.
Lays out requirements, when bar staff are made aware of a drink spiking incident on the premises, to engage law enforcement and attend to the victim.
Author(s): Lowenthal (D-Long Beach)
AJ Position: SUPPORT – as part of the generally underrecognized prevalence of drink spiking, there are no clear processes for staff to follow when it occurs. The victims, while involuntarily intoxicated, may not always be supportive of more aggressive interventions, and the bartenders, servers, and security staff might be skeptical that the victim was drugged or unwilling to overrule the victim’s judgment in the circumstances. This bill provides clarity and helps ensure that victims cannot be isolated–the circumstance under which the worst harms can happen.
CAPA Position: SUPPORT
Position Letters:
AB 2402
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Drink spiking.
Obligates the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) to create and administer a module in its Responsible Beverage Service (RBS) training on recognizing drink spiking and providing care to victims.
Author(s): Lowenthal (D-Long Beach)
AJ Position: SUPPORT – The California RBS certification program has created the backbone for an effective pedagogy for all employees engaged in on-sale alcohol service. However, how to prevent and address drink spiking was never specifically identified as a requirement for RBS lesson plans, an oversight rectified in this bill.
CAPA Position: SUPPORT
Position Letters:
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: additional licenses: County of El Dorado and County of Placer. Grants 10 additional on-sale restaurant licenses to the counties of El Dorado and Placer, provided that these bars are in a “retail center,” aka shopping mall.
Author(s): Patterson (R-Rocklin)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – California statutorily limits the number of alcohol licenses that can be granted in a given place, because granting licenses without limit eventually starts creating issues around crime, violence, injury, and dangerous driving. Unfortunately for the people who might be victimized, brutalized, injured, or crashed into, alcohol sales make money, and so time after time lawmakers seek to expand the number licenses in their region so as to avoid taking real action to help their constituents. In this particular case, the extra licenses are intended to help shopping malls, because a massive, automobile-centric development with a long reputation of being one of the few havens for suburban teenagers can only thrive if the people who drive there can get drunk.
Position Letters:
AB 2615
Version: 10/1
Status: DEAD
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: COVID-19 Temporary Catering Authorization: airside terminal space.
Would allow airports to create delimited “beer gardens” where alcohol service could occur beyond the physical limitations of the existing bar footprints.
Author(s): McKinnor (D-Inglewood)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – alcohol-fueled aggression and disruption has always been a hazard of air travel and the bane of flight staff. In recent years, it has been on the increase. Trying to goose profits at airline terminals through alcohol sales is just begging for the worst to happen (or keep happening).
CAPA Position: OPPOSE
Position Letters:
AB 2869
Version: 10/1
Status: DEAD
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: tied-house restrictions: advertising.
Would allow a particular theme park in Orange County to sell advertising to alcohol producers or retailers despite the fact that the park itself has a liquor license. Also seems to allow some form of self-dealing, i.e. selling advertising to another organization within that company that also sells alcohol. It’s a mess. Fortunately, it’s dead for the year.
Author(s): Valencia (D-Anaheim)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – Like last year’s Amazon three-tier exemption, this seems to be a case of a megacorporation (we don’t know that it’s Disney, but we suspect it’s not Knott’s Berry Farm) getting into three-tier trouble by edging towards a vertical monopoly. And like last year’s Amazon three-tier exemption, the argument for its necessity seems to be that megacorporation’s should be allowed to form vertical monopolies if they really want to. However, the three-tier system is at heart an antitrust safeguard against specifically what Disney, Amazon, and so many other corporate concerns would like to do, and so should be upheld. To overthrow it risks allowing economies of scale and ubiquity of common ownership that greatly increase alcohol harm, as, indeed, it was pre-Prohibition. Or to put it another way, ask yourself why Goofy needs to sell your child a Tanqueray and tonic.
Position Letters:
AB 2991
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverage control: retailer payments: electronic funds transfers.
Requires that retailers pay wholesalers through electronic fund transfers.
Author(s): Valencia (D-Anaheim)
AJ Position: WATCH – We do not foresee public health or safety impacts from this bill. In fact, it is likely an additional burden on retailers.
Position Letters:
AB 3117
Version: 10/1
Status: DEAD
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: evidence of majority and identity.
Allows alcohol licensees to accept digital ID cards, as issued by the DMV, to be used in lieu of a paper identification.
Author(s): Wilson (D-Suisun City)
AJ Position: SUPPORT – After inquiry with both ABC and the DMV, it seems that this technology has safeguards that make it harder to pass a fraudulent ID through inspection. The paper ID has to be checked centrally by the DMV before the electronic version is issued. There are still some concerns here–namely, that clerks will not be trained on how to properly ensure they’re looking at the DMV app, and that there seems to be no way to impound or otherwise flag a stolen or borrowed digital ID–but as it stands, you can order a fake ID on any of a hundred sites on the Internet, so we are tentatively convinced.
Position Letters:
AB 3195
Version: 10/1
Status: DEAD
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: hours of sale.
Would allow any interested on-sale licensees to extend Friday, Saturday, and holiday service hours to 4 a.m.
Author(s): Haney (D-San Francisco)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – Restrictions on last call times are a fundamental pillar of safe alcohol sales, and have been supported time and time again in the scientific literature. Absent these controls, locales see increases in violence, crime, dangerous driving, and other accidental injuries. San Francisco’s continued in particular has long sought these extensions, despite the fact that, with the patterns of movement among visitors and residents seeking out these extended last-call times, much of the pain and suffering from the bill would go to San Francisco’s surroundings while the city enjoyed the profit. This is a policy that the public has never been, and will continue to not be, comfortable with. Although the bill has been pulled, we have seen similar instances where the bill’s sponsors seemed to lay it rest only to reintroduce it as a gut-and-amend with a very short window to oppose. We should not assume this version will stay down, nor that it won’t return next year.
CAPA Position: OPPOSE
Position Letters:
AB 3203
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Craft distillers: direct shipping.
Allows craft distillers to continue direct shipping via common carrier (FedEx and UPS, primarily) to California residents.
Author(s): Aguiar-Curry (D-Davis)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – A handle on demand is a recipe for enabling someone to drink themselves to death, and make no mistake, this bill allows an absolutely lethal amount of alcohol (2.25 liters per day–a handle plus a 750 ml bottle) to show up every afternoon. Aside from the basic risks of making alcohol consumption a zero-friction hobby, common carrier is a poorly monitored and difficult to audit method of delivering alcohol. By putting the onus on a volume-based delivery service, the odds skyrocket that couriers will simply not have the time to adequately ensure an of-age recipient is at the door. (Never mind the fact that there is no expectation that couriers receive anything resembling RBS training.) This delivery privilege was supposed to be an emergency boost to keep the lights on during COVID-19 lockdowns. Now it is one of the explosion of “new normal” deregulatory policies that have led to an precipitous rise in alcohol-related deaths in the state.
Position Letters:
AB 3206
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: hours of sale: arenas in the City of Inglewood.
Would allow for a 4 a.m. last call time in the new basketball arena in the Los Angeles area.
Author(s): McKinner (D-Inglewood)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – This bill is the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent. The argument would be that the harm to others from a single, exclusive VIP room in a basketball stadium would be nearly imperceptible, and therefore there is no harm from a 4 a.m. last call. These assertions are not well founded, however. The harm would not be imperceptible, but rather easy to bury–either not reported by the stadium, minimized by the possible wealth of the patrons, or dispersed throughout the Los Angeles area after even the VIP room closes. Yet anything beyond an immediate firefight risks engaging every other billionaire’s pet team to demand a late-call VIP room for its stadium. And if every stadium has them, why not concert venues? Convention centers? And why is it only for these hoity-toity places, shouldn’t every bar be allowed to close at 4 a.m. The worst thing about it: the argument for its necessity is absolute gibberish. The billionaire owners of these teams and the billionaire investors in this arena are hardly desperate for a little extra revenue. Meanwhile the millionaires who’d be accessing this club have a thousand other options if they want to keep drinking after hours, never mind 10 million or more non-rich early morning commuters to collide with.
CAPA Position: OPPOSE
Position Letters:
Version: 10/1
Status: DEAD
Summary: Drug court success incentives pilot program.
Would allow four counties to launch pilot programs in which adults participating in “drug court” recovery-focused diversionary programs would be given stipends to incentivize continued engagement.
Author(s): Wilson (D-Suisun City)
AJ Position: SUPPORT – Despite the noble intentions, drug court programs have been deviled since their inception by lower completion rates than voluntary programs. The proposed stipends a sense in two ways. First, it uses parallel logic to contingency management, wherein the reward from the payment partially supplants the reward from the drug. Second, and possibly more importantly, it provides immediate cash on hand to offset the many, many challenges facing low-income Californians, particularly those with criminal justice involvement. Even with full intention to complete diversion, problems around shelter, transportation, access to email and regular mail, and other concerns that many take for granted, can render the task imposing or impossible. Incentives can keep the people who do want to complete the program from washing out before they begin.
Position Letters:
2024 Senate Bills
SB 969
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: entertainment zones: consumption.
Would allow localities to establish party zones, where alcohol is sold directly from bars and caterers into the street.
Author(s): Wiener (D-San Francisco)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – This is a retread of a bill from last year, which allows any interested city or other local jurisdiction to declare and arbitrarily large part of their city an “entertainment zone,” where open carry rules are suspended for drinks sold by on-sale licensees. To put it more simply, it allows Bourbon St. to open in any and every California town. Other than the requirement that the beverages be sold by on-sale licensees and a requirement that wristbands, or the equivalent be used, this policy has minimal guardrails. There is no obligation that anybody be responsible for patron health and safety–no city staffing requirements, no contribution from licensees to the security in the zone, and no opportunity to engage in responsible beverage service. Of additional concern, there is nothing that obligates that traffic be separated from the consumers–creating a situation where people are drawn to drive to the party zone, drink to excess, then drive home on the very street where others are still drinking to excess. Beyond that, there’s no limits on hours of the day, days of the week, nor triggers under which the zone should be considered an unreasonable public health and safety threat. There is also every temptation for licensees in party zones to sack their staff and simply sell high-potency drinks from the door, a practice that is both a public health threat and a job destroyer. In the words of a UNC team assessing a similar policy in their state, this is tailor made to concentrate the benefits and distribute the harm.
Position Letters:
SB 1028
Version: 10/1
Status: DEAD
Summary: Alcoholic beverage licensees: on-sale general licenses for bona fide eating places.
Would automatically grant an additional 10 licenses to any county that is overconcentrated.
Author(s): Alvarado-Gil (D-Modesto)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – You might assume that the term “overconcentrated” implies that it should not be an automatic trigger for even more licenses. But you are not in the California State Legislature. Having brakes on consumption through limiting geographical availability is a basic tenet of alcohol control. The overconcentration limit is determined by population, so does not permanently cap available licenses, but legislators still find themselves pressured to request more through district bills. This bill would shield them from any accountability through its automatic issuance. Worse, by granting these additional licenses in perpetuity to any county that is overconcentrated, it shrugs off the entire concept that alcohol causes harm.
Position Letters:
SB 1224
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverage control: on-sale general license: County of Riverside.
Would create an exemption for the alcohol license of the Riverside County Fairgrounds that would remove the minimum food sales requirement to maintain bona fide eating place status.
Author(s): Ochoa Bogh (R-Redlands)
AJ Position: WATCH – The bill authors assert that this loophole is necessary because food trucks have offset revenue from the fairgrounds food concessionaires to the point that they do not meet the requirements for bona fide eating place, even though substantial food sales continue. Absent evidence to the contrary, we do not see this as increasing risk from sales at this location.
Position Letters:
SB 1371
Version: 10/1
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverage control: proof of age.
Allows stadia incorporating biometric data to verify age to bolster defenses against illegal sales to minors.
Author(s): Bradford (D-Inglewood)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – Neither law enforcement, nor ABC, nor any relative of someone served illegally, has any ability to analyze, interpret, and accept or reject a biometric surveillance system that is completely in-house. It gives the entity employing this method of age verification carte blanche to assert the person was carded even if there was no interaction whatsoever with the person in question. Needless to say, this seems to be a request of the Inglewood stadium that also thinks it deserve 4 a.m. last call times.
Position Letters:
2023 Assembly Bills
Version: 10/23/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Sale of shochu.
Would allow for shochu, a 24% ABV Japanese fermented rice liquor that is similar to soju, to be sold by any licensee already eligible to sell wine. (Soju already has this privilege.)
Author(s): Muratsuchi (D-Torrance)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – The issue is not so much that it is somehow dangerous to stock shochu in wine shops, but not so with soju. The issue is that soju never should’ve been afforded this privilege, and extending it to shochu begins a process of overturning much of the intent behind alcoholic product categories—indeed, many on-sale licensees use soju as a mixed drink spirit base in lieu of vodka, rather than serving it by the glass like wine. Limiting access is intended to limit harm, and we should make the limits simple and bright-line: these products are stronger than most wines, often served differently than wines, made differently than wines, and therefore should not be considered wines.
Position Letters:
Version: 10/8/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Tied-house restrictions.
Tightens and clarifies restrictions on gifts from manufacturers and wholesalers to retailers, defining credits and rebates as gifts, and cleaning up the language to cover all alcoholic beverages.
Author(s): Villapudua (D-Stockton)
AJ Position: SUPPORT – any opening through which manufacturers can gift to retailers becomes an opportunity for, essentially, pay-to-play. By preventing industry actors from becoming more “hands-on,” this bill would delay consolidation and keep the market diversified—practically speaking, allowing more space for more expensive product, reduce harm.
Position Letters:
Version: 5/18/23
Status: DEAD
Summary: Drug court success incentives pilot program.
Allows courts in some counties, when ordering a defendant to drug treatment diversion programs, to also provide an incentive payment of up to $500 per month to reduce dropping out or recidivism.
Author(s): Davies (R-San Juan Capistrano)
AJ Position: SUPPORT – Individuals mandated to drug treatment are likely to be extremely low income, creating substantial issues around completing treatment and retaining sobriety post-treatment. The $500 payment not only broadly incentivizes adherence, it may offset some of the crippling quality-of-life concerns that make recovery extraordinarily difficult for individuals in extreme poverty.
Position Letters:
Version: 10/7/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Tied-house exceptions: advertising: California State University campuses.
Would suspend tied-house restrictions on alcohol advertising in the stadiums and other public facilities of every Cal State campus.
Author(s): Addis (D-San Luis Obispo/Monterey); coauthors Petri-Norris (D-Laguna Beach) and McCarty (D-Sacramento)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – While these kinds of tied-house exemptions are approved in an ad hoc manner, this bill would sweepingly supplant all of the tied-house protections across an enormous swath of educational facilities. We cannot emphasize this enough: at 4-year colleges, many to most attendees are under the legal drinking age. This contrasts even with professional sports stadiums, where youth form a large portion of the audience but you cannot assume the very purpose of the establishment is to house them. Add to this the fact that alcohol is a major preventable factor in deaths among young adults, and this is one area where the three-tier restrictions should be defended at all costs—and not wiped away in a casual, virtually unaccountable manner.
Position Letters:
Version: 5/10/23
Status: DEAD
Summary: Alcoholic beverage licenses: off-sale privileges: airports.
Would permit on-sale alcohol outlets—bars and restaurants—in airports to sell to-go cups of alcohol to patrons.
Author(s): Villapudua (D-Stockton)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – This bill would increase the likelihood that airline patrons are intoxicated, expand the places in which these intoxicated customers could be found, and ease efforts to sneak already-open alcohol containers onto flights. The harms are clear: more disruption before and on flights, more hostile encounters with flight and service staff, and less responsibility or oversight for intoxicated patrons by these licensees. In addition, this would make airline terminals considerably less welcoming to individuals in recovery, and put those traveling with children in potentially uncomfortable situations. Considering the last few years have already seen a massive uptick in violent customer behavior, this could not be a more ill-founded concept.
Position Letters:
Version: 10/7/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: On-sale general public premises: drug testing devices.
Would require bars and restaurants to stock, publicize, and offer—at no more than a nominal markup— devices for testing adulterants in alcoholic beverages.
Author(s): Lowenthal (D-Long Beach)
AJ Position: SUPPORT – Giving patrons the option to test for “date rape” drugs (a misnomer—drugs used to compel sex are just rape drugs) not only protects bargoers, it has deterrent potential that may reduce incidences of drink-spiking.
Position Letters:
Version: 10/13/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Licensed craft distillers: direct shipping.
A one-year extension of the pandemic-era rule allowing craft distillers to ship products via common carrier (UPS and FedEx).
Author(s): Rubio (D-West Covina)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – Anywhere, anytime alcohol provision is dangerous, and in fact has been capped by law for a century. It is no safer to have a morning bottle of whiskey dropped on your doorstep now than it was in 1970. UPS and FedEx drivers are not obligated to receive responsible sales training, and even if they were, the time-constrained nature of those jobs leaves them in no position to verify age and nonintoxication. Moreover, this bill allows for the shipping of a truly astonishing quantity of distilled spirits to any given individual 2.25 liters per day, or a handle plus a 750 ml. bottle. This is, for all intents and purposes, a fatal quantity of alcohol.
Position Letters:
Version: 6/29/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Substance use disorder.
Officially removes the term “addict” from all regulations and guidelines surrounding state-run prevention, treatment, and recovery services, replacing it with “person with substance use disorder”.
Author(s): Berman (D-Menlo Park)
AJ Position: SUPPORT – Even within the movement towards person-centered language, “addict” is notably ripe for retirement. The term has long held a derogatory edge, and with the current framing of substance abuse disorders, “addiction” itself no longer has a clear medical definition.
Position Letters:
Version: 10/8/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Business pandemic relief.
Continues the COVID-19-era alcohol deregulatory measures, particularly the expanded footprints of bars and restaurants, until July 2026.
Author(s): Gabriel (D-Los Angeles)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – The expanded footprints gave essentially every interested on-sale alcohol a substantial boost to customer capacity. In a situation like this, one of two things happen: either more people attend these bars and restaurants, resulting in more alcohol-related harm and more neighborhood disruption, or there is no additional attendance, and no economic benefit for bars and restaurants. Both cases are obvious arguments for ending the program, which was never intended to raise capacity, only to allow people to socially distance during a time of contagion. The reports of ongoing conflicts between residents and businesses, and the periodic destruction of park-lets by shoddy design or dangerous driving, lend urgency to the call to terminate the program.
Position Letters:
Version: 10/8/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Tied-house restrictions: advertising exceptions: County of Kern > Kings.
Allows alcohol advertising at an artificial wave pool in Kings County that also has a bar. Importantly, this pool creates surfable waves and will be the site for televised competitions.
Author(s): Boerner Horvath (D-Carlsbad); coauthor Mathis (R-Porterville)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – This is just a recapitulation of the need to Free Our Sports. As best we can tell, the express purpose of this exemption is for advertisers for their events, events which will draw a substantial underage audience. There are a million other products that would eagerly sponsor an extreme sports event, and the lack of an alcohol sponsorship would hardly be a death sentence.
Position Letters:
Version: 5/18/23
Status: DEAD
Summary: Vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.
Grants access to the state Restitution Fund to any children whose parent(s) died as the result of an intoxicated driving event.
Author(s): Gipson (D-Carson)
AJ Position: SUPPORT IF AMENDED – The original, MADD-supported draft required the restitution to also be paid by the intoxicated driver found guilty of the killings. That language was stripped out. While Alcohol Justice is cautious of supporting primarily punitive bills, the language in this one was restorative in nature, creating a deterrent that also helped rectify the alcohol-related crime. If a restorative deterrent is reintegrated into this bill, then Alcohol Justice will reinstate its support.
Position Letters:
Version: 9/30/23
Status: DEAD
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: licenses: County of Placer.
Would grant 10 additional full-bar licenses for restaurants in Placer County.
Author(s): Patterns (R-Granite Bay)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – When these additional licenses are requested legislatively, it means that the county has exceeded the statutory ratio of licenses to population. Controlling overconcentration is one the foundational elements of safe alcohol sales, as the density of establishments in and of itself can be associated with increased crime and worsened health outcomes in nearby communities. What’s more, once granted, it is all but impossible to retire this licenses again, even if harm rises. And in case you have not been paying attention, harm has risen dramatically over the past three years.
Position Letters:
Version: 10/13/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverage licenses.
A mixed bag of licensing tweaks. First, it would allow winegrowers who create spirits of wine—sherries, brandies, and the like—to then sell those products to distilled spirits manufacturers. Second, it would require the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to broadcast via video the drawings for new or relocated licenses when they are made available. Third, it would change eligibility for the brewpub-to-restaurant license conversions authorized in the previous session from being defined by the holder of the license to being defined by the status of the license itself, whether or not it had been transferred.
Author(s): Santiago (D-Los Angeles)
AJ Position: WATCH – There’s always a concern when itty bitty regulatory tweaks add up in a single bill. However, for the most part, these changes do not seem to increase the potential for harm. Expanded cross-manufacturer sales is worth monitoring in the future, as it may allow for stealth expansion and, essentially, “alcohol laundering.”
Position Letters:
2023 Senate Bills
Version: 9/21/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: music venue license: entertainment zones: consumption.
AMENDED SUMMARY: Would allow San Francisco to established “party zones,” where alcohol can be bought from a bar and consumed on the street, during designated special events. ORIGINAL SUMMARY: Would allow cities to establish “party zones,” where alcohol can be brought from a bar and consumed on the street.
Author(s): Wiener (D-San Francisco)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – One of the few significant widespread protective alcohol policies California has adopted in the past decade was responsible beverage service training. This training was intended to educate and equip bar staff with skills that would allow them to identify, cut off, and de-escalate confrontational situations with people who have been drinking. The entire party zone concept cuts off RBS training at the knees. It also makes accountability for dangerous service nearly impossible, and while recent revisions do insist on some method to identify underage drinkers, it calls for neither security nor police within these zones, making it unclear who would actually eject underage drinkers and how these drinkers (or any other problem individuals) could be kept away. More broadly, the areas in the United States with these kinds of policies—think the Las Vegas Strip, or Bourbon St. in New Orleans—end up experiencing tremendous amounts of harm and violence, much of it alcohol-related. There is no city in California that would benefit from similar chaos engines.
Position Letters:
Version: 9/7/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: licensing exemptions: barbering and cosmetology services.
Clarifies that the “Dry Bar Bill,” which allowed salons and barbershops to give alcohol to patrons, applies to all establishments regulated by the State Board of Barbering and Cosmetology.
Author(s): Wilk (R-Santa Clarita)
AJ Position: WATCH – Make no mistake, the Dry Bar Bill is a mess, allowing alcohol service at—according to the authors—50,000 establishments that were not under ABC oversight. In fact, as best we can tell, there remains no disciplinary mechanism against Dry Bar Bill beneficiaries who violate the terms of the legislation. It triggered a wave of bills insisting alcohol service was essential to art classes, galleries, pedicabs, and more. That said, it is difficult to tell whether this clarification will restrict the number of stores able to deliver alcohol (because it boxes out any service not explicitly under license from the Board) or expand it (owing to the vagary of “beauty salon service”). For now, we watch.
Position Letters:
Version: 9/21/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: licensed premises: retail sales and consumption.
Allows facilities that are combined distilleries-wineries to serve their products in the same space.
Author(s): Laird (D-Santa Cruz)
AJ Position: WATCH – This enables the continued consolidation of alcohol products and the delegitimization of the three-tier structure, but it is already legal for combined wineries/breweries to sell products in the same place. The fundamental issue is that these combined facilities exist at all, not that they are able to sell their products without an arbitrary and functionless divider between them.
Position Letters:
Version: 6/9/23
Status: DEAD
Summary: Off-sale beer and wine licenses: low alcohol-by-volume spirits beverages.
Allows cocktails-in-a-can, which are made with distilled spirits, to be sold in stores with a beer-and-wine-only off-sale license.
Author(s): Dodd (D-Napa)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – This would not only breach the entire point of a beer-and-wine license—to have the lowest ABV and lowest binge risk products the most available—but it would vastly increase the assortment of alcopops in the stores most frequented by youth. The allowable products get up to 10% ABV at 16 oz., which is essentially three standard drinks of alcohol. These “cocktails-in-a-can” are universally heavily sweetened and flavored, masking the taste of alcohol and making them functionally indistinguishable from Four Loko, Bud-a-Ritas, Buzz Ballz, and other low-cost, youth-targeted malt beverage products. In fact, with the current trend for branding these with identifiable soda logos makes these likely even riskier than the last generation of alcopops. Considering the fact that corner stores—the most common recipients of a beer-and-wine license—are the most often frequented type of store by youth, this is a stupidly reckless bill that helps the most cynical and contemptuous alcohol producers.
Position Letters:
Version: 8/23/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic Beverage Tax: beer manufacturer returns and schedule.
Provides a technical modification to the retail tax return process making it easier for beer manufacturers to set price schedules.
Author(s): Archuleta (D-Pico Rivera)
AJ Position: WATCH – This is serious insider baseball. Distributors are required to have set prices and cannot haggle with each retailers individually. By encouraging transparency in beer manufacturer tax returns, it gives manufacturers richer information by which to set those prices. Alcohol Justice does not see this affecting levels of consumption or industry consolidation.
Position Letters:
Version: 10/8/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Tied-house restrictions: advertising exceptions: City of Inglewood.
Allows the new Major League Soccer stadium (we think) in Inglewood to receive advertising money even though they also have an alcohol license.
Author(s): Bradford (D-Garden) and McKinnor (D-Inglewood)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – The process of chipping away at the three tiers continues. Aside from the fact that research clearly ties alcohol service at sporting events to incidents of criminal violence and other disruption, sporting events also attract disproportionately large youth audiences. This makes them a venue for imprinting marketing on the youngest attendees while normalizing the worst consequences of consumption.
Position Letters:
Version: 8/16/23
Status: DEAD
Summary: Tied-house exceptions: advertising: common parent company.
Allows Amazon, the owner of a large retail alcohol sales arm, to receive money for advertising from alcohol manufacturers for their streaming broadcasts of Monday Night Football.
Author(s): Dodd (D-Napa)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – The legislature loves to nickel-and-dime away the three-tier system, but this is egregious. The various stadium and concert venue exemptions are meant to raise money in specific, narrow situations. This opens the door for a massive, multibillion-dollar, vertically integrated company to flood its broadcast channels with advertisements for the alcohol that it will then stock in its brick-and-mortar (and, if they get their way), online stores. This is the situation that three-tier laws were expressly intended to prevent, and self-evidently accelerates the process by which alcohol sales in California become cheap, centralized, and relentlessly pushed on all residents of all ages.
Position Letters:
Version: 10/1/24
Status: DEAD
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: deliveries: off-sale retail licenses and consumer delivery service permits.
The newest iteration of the bills attempting to legalize and formalize all forms of alcohol delivery via TNC (e.g., GrubHub, Uber, Doordash, etc.).
Author(s): Rubio (D-West Covina)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – Alcohol home delivery instantly proved a popular method for underage customers to obtain alcohol when it was instituted as an emergency measure. Without training and under perverse incentives from TNCs to complete illegal deliveries or else receive a job-ending bad rating, drivers were inclined to ignore the law entirely. ABC sting rates of delivery drivers started high and remain high to this day. Add to this the fact that simply introducing alcohol into every casual transaction (such as ordering out) lays the groundwork for harmful or lethal drinking patterns. We saw this during lockdown, and the time is nigh to roll it back, not codify it. All that said, if TNC delivery were to be legalized, doing so in a manner that creates large penalties for violations, that protects the drivers, that mandates a form of responsible service training, and that is overseeable by ABC in such a way that a persistently negligent licensee can lose their right to deliver alcohol, should be obligatory. This bill seems to do so. This does not change the fact that mindful consumption is essential to ensuring safe sales, and widespread alcohol delivery overtly undermines this. For that reason, Alcohol Justice remains opposed.
Position Letters:
Version: 10/8/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverage control: licenses: violations.
Strengthens ABC’s abilities to assess penalties and consider the consequences of illegal alcohol sales when doing so.
Author(s): Gonzalez (D-Long Beach)
AJ Position: SUPPORT – As industry revenues have soared, ABC’s ability to levy fines have remained statutorily frozen. This bill would double the amount of money ABC can demand in an offer in compromise (cash in lieu of license suspension). Moreover, it gives ABC the ability to impose harsher consequences if a sale to a minor or obviously intoxicated person resulted in serious injury or death to that person, or on account of that person. By bringing these stronger enforcement measures into play, this reduces the probability that a reckless retailer will simply buy off the department, as well as giving ABC a functional budgetary increase since fines are usually paid right back into the Department.
Position Letters:
Version: 7/21/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Number of licensed premises: County of Nevada.
Would allow Nevada County to distribute new on-sale alcohol licenses despite the existence of statutory overconcentration.
Author(s): Dahl (R-Redding)
AJ Position: OPPOSE – Overconcetration is intended to be a flag that the current number of alcohol outlets is nearing the point where it is driving additional death and injury from alcohol-related harms. Unfortunately, this bill—like so many, every session—treats it as an indication that lawmakers need to aggressively pack in more bars. Since these licenses are extraordinarily difficult for ABC to retract and remove from circulation, bills like this perpetuate an endless ratchet of overconsumption.
Position Letters:
Version: 8/31/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Beer manufacturers: cider and perry.
Allows craft brewers to also make fermented fruit-based carbonated beverages, an ability that, ironically, megaproducers already have.
Author(s): Ashby (D-Sacramento) and Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters)
AJ Position: WATCH – Unfortunately, the company that could do the most harm with this—ABI—was granted this privilege about a decade ago. Considering that, and the fact that cider remains a niche product and not as relentlessly advertised to youth as alcopops and cocktails in a can are, Alcohol Justice is only watching this bill for the time being.
Position Letters:
Version: 9/30/23
Status: SIGNED INTO LAW
Summary: Alcoholic beverage control: licenses.
License-holders are permitted to carry over their existing license to a newly constructed location. This bill would require them to post notice (similar to a new license application) while the construction and transfer proceeds.
Author(s): Rubio (D-West Covina)
AJ Position: SUPPORT – Neighborhood transparency is always a net good, even if we worry this posting would get lost in the flurry of other public notice postings required with much new construction.
Position Letters:
We are now including in the bill list both the Alcohol Justice (AJ) position on bills as well as the position of
California Alcohol Policy Alliance (CAPA) on select bills of concern to the statewide coalition.