Alcohol Justice monitors state and federal legislative activity (including budget proposals) in 5 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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Last update: October 15, 2025
CALIFORNIA LEGISLATIVE POSITIONS
Alcohol-related legislative activity in California, including bills and budget proposals.
2025 Legislative Session
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For copies of Alcohol Justice or CAPA position letters, please email our legislative staff.
2025 Assembly Bills
Version: 5/30
Status: Dead in Committee (Assm. Approps)
Summary: Ignition interlock devices.
Makes the current ignition interlock device (IID) pilot program permanent. This is a fallback for AB 366, which provides for more mandatory triggers for IIDs, and would override AB 71 if both pass. UPDATE: This bill died in committee, but AB 366 was amended to be essentially identical to the original AB 71 text.
Author(s): Assm. Lackey
AJ Position: SUPPORT—See our support of AB 366 for more details. IIDs create both safer roads and more equitable alternatives to license suspensions.
Version: 7/14
Status: Signed Into Law
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: licensees.
Allows beer wholesalers to sell to retailers from trailers.
Author(s): Assm. Gipson
AJ Analysis: Currently, wholesalers are allowed to sell from trucks and wagons (yes, wagons) but not trailers. This bill would add trailers, via a fairly niche rationalization: during the Los Angeles Olympics coming next year, large swaths of the city will be closed to vehicle traffic. By pre-stocking trailers and leaving them in lots within the secure zones, wholesalers are not subject to as many encounters with security. We do not see a way that this would exacerbate harm, although based on the numerous bills intended to liberalize alcohol sales specifically in Los Angeles over the past few years, the city seems to be planning for and encouraging a profoundly concerning quantity of alcohol consumption surrounding that event.
Version: 7/8
Status: Pulled By Author
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: hours of sale: hospitality zones.
2025’s 4 A.M. Bar Bill. This iteration would allow local jurisdictions to set up zones of arbitrary size in which on-sale licensees would be permitted to stay open until 4 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday mornings. In addition, jurisdictions would be given the option of creating temporary authorizations for 4 a.m. trading hours for special events that, again, can be arbitrarily designated—and nothing in the language prevents it from being a year-long special event.
Author(s): Assm. Haney
AJ Position: OPPOSE—Trading hours are a tentpole of evidence-based alcohol harm mitigation. Alcohol consumption in the early morning hours is associated with a range of social harms, including dangerous driving, violence, crime, and stress on emergency services. Indeed, research out of Baltimore shows that restricting trading hours in heavily crime-affected areas dramatically lowers criminal violence and homicide. Worse, this harm does not stay put, with dangerous driving spreading out as far as 40 miles away into other cities and counties. At a time when crime is a serious concern and funds to mitigate the likely impacts of trading hours have dried up, there are few policies that are more ill-conceived.
Version: 10/6
Status: Signed Into Law
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: beer price posting and marketing regulations: definitions.
Prohibits a company from, upon purchasing a beer manufacturer, canceling the manufacturer’s existing wholesaler contracts without remuneration.
Author(s): Assm. Valencia
AJ Analysis: This closes a loophole in inter-tier gamesmanship and does not create risk for increased consumption.
Version: 10/13
Status: Signed Into Law
Summary: Ignition interlock devices.
Makes ignition interlock devices (IIDs) mandatory after the first DUI conviction, extending and strengthening the existing IID pilot program currently scheduled to sunset. (AB 71 would extend the current pilot but not strengthen the criteria under which IIDs are installed.) UPDATE: The strengthened interlock requirements in AB 366—including making them mandatory for first offenders, instead of mandated at judicial discretion—were removed in committee, and the bill now simply extends the existing program through 2033.
Author(s): Assm. Petrie-Norris and Assm. Ransom
AJ Position: SUPPORT—IIDs are effective in preventing recidivism for as long as they are installed. DUI recidivism not just creates the short-term risks of dangerous driving, it leads to the rapidly escalating penalties for repeat offenders. California (and indeed most of the United States) is a place where many simply cannot survive without access to automobiles, so in this case, the IID not only prevents continued offending, it also protects the families of an individual convicted of reckless driving from the impacts of a suspended license. There are two catches, however. First, socioeconomic equity—currently, the DMV provides subsidies for low-income individuals obligated to install IIDs, and this must be continued, otherwise the program creates an unmeetable obligation. Second, although 366’s automatic triggers are standard in many other states, IID design is an evolving field and the state should be maximally transparent to ensure the court-ordered devices maximize safety and minimize unnecessary surveillance.
Version: 10/1
Status: Signed Into Law
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: licenses: County of Colusa.
Allows 5 additional licenses to Colusa County in excess of the overconcentration limit, with at least 1 of these licenses going to the Cachil Dehe Band of Wintun Indians. UPDATE: The final bill was amended to increase the total number of licenses to 10, and remove the requirement that a license would be reserved for the Cachil Dehe Band.
Author(s): Assm. Aguiar-Curry
AJ Analysis: Overconcentration creates conditions for a raft of alcohol-related problems. Every petition to exceed the statutory limit on number of licenses in an area calls on their ability to generate economic activity. This, in turn, seems to have inspired a widespread agreement to overlook the harms that arise at when there are many alcohol outlets per capita in an area.
Version: 10/3
Status: Signed Into Law
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: minors.
Allows the use of age verification software to augment ID checking by licensees, allowing use of them as a defense against charges of illegal sales to minors.
Author(s): Assm. Flora
AJ Analysis: Age verification/biometric software is almost certainly fallible. However, the law still mandates a visual inspection as well. We would strongly recommend that this bill place liability on the software retailer for failures. The manufacturers of these devices are selling “black boxes” that ostensibly prevent fraud, but the actual alcohol licensee, not to mention the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, has no way to verify the robustness of those claims.
Version: 10/9
Status: Signed Into Law
Summary: Business: retail food.
Extends COVID-era “emergency” regulatory relief measures, including expanded footprints and cocktails-to-go.
Author(s): Assm. Gabriel, Assm. M. González and Assm. Wicks
AJ Position: OPPOSE—These measures were only ever intended to allow businesses to stay open while encouraging social distancing. Instead, they have become mechanisms for licensees to vastly increase their service capacity beyond that allowed in their initial license. With alcohol-related problems remaining elevated even after the passing of the peak of COVID-19 infections, it’s time to sunset extended footprints, open-container takeout and delivery, and other industry giveaways.
Version: 8/29
Status: Senate Appropriations – Held Under Consideration
Summary: Alcoholic beverage control: large outdoor events: drink spiking.
Applies existing “drink spiking” regulations—including requirements for test kits, drink lids, and mandatory emergency services engagement—to catering services working outdoor events.
Author(s): Assm. Lowenthal & Assm. Davies
AJ Position: SUPPORT—“Drink spiking,” the act of adding an additional psychoactive drug to someone’s drink without their knowledge, has become a recognized risk from nightlife. While the actual prevalence of drink spiking varies from 5% to 20% depending on the survey, the physical and mental health impacts can be severe. Although sexual assault derived from drugged incapacitation is the harm most commonly portrayed in the media, even an evening of unwanted drug intoxication in which no other adverse events occur can result in lasting trauma. The recent raft of “drink spiking” bills put a low-investment obligation on alcohol retailers that can almost entirely remove the threat of nonconsensual drug consumption in public spaces, and this bill extends that to alcohol retailers at outdoor music festivals. Although the bill mandates common-sense and largely non-carceral prevention strategies, there seems to be an exploitable loophole in the bill. Though retailers can charge nominal fees for test kits and lids, the bill is not supposed to make anti-spiking paraphernalia a profit center. But nothing in the bill language prevents retailers and caterers from obtaining protective supplies from organizations that provide them as a public service, then charging customers for them. We suggest the authors address this, but even as currently written, the bill promises to facilitate safer consumption of alcohol.
Version: 10/10
Status: Signed Into Law
Summary: Winegrowers and brandy manufacturers: privileges off-premises.
Allows wine producers to top off wine barrels in warehouses and other storage locations separate from the winery itself.
UPDATE: This bill was substantially expanded to allow further privileges for winegrowers. These extended privileges include allowing winegrowers who hold a brandy producers’ license to hold brandy tastings and engage in off-premise brandy sales at the wine, and allowing winegrowers 36 days’ worth of temporary approvals to conduct wine tastings on the premises.
Author(s): Assm. Rogers
AJ Analysis: Evaporation is an unavoidable part of wine production, and refilling barrels to replace lost volume will become inevitability necessary to maintain quality (and, in some cases, an appropriately lower ABV). However, under the current legal limitations placed on producers, alcohol stored off-site cannot be altered in any way, including wine that’s being warehoused but not actively modified. Because wine stored this way must be “topped off” as evaporation occurs, wineries are obligated to physically move barrels in storage back to the main facility to do this. While saving producers money is not an Alcohol Justice priority, this bill does not seem to increase production capacity, and we would prefer that money go to increased excise taxes instead of diesel fuel.
UPDATE: It is important to note that winegrowers are first and foremost grape farmers, not wine producers. The extension of production and sales permits to them does not technically violate the three-tier system, but it continues the collapse of the industry into monopolistic structures.
Version: 5/21
Status: Senate GO
Summary: Beer manufacturers: sale of draught beer.
Allows breweries to provide samples of beer directly from tanks during tours, without obligating them to follow the tap labeling requirements other on-sale licensees must follow.
Author(s): Assm. M. Rodriguez
AJ Analysis: There’s an outside chance for a producer to create a liability fiasco for themselves by serving someone an allergen. That said, this bill is relatively inconsequential—the real problem is that, per the three-tier system, producers should not be retailing alcohol.
Version: 10/13
Status: Signed Into Law
Summary: Alcoholic beverage control: neighborhood-restricted special on-sale general licenses.
Creates 40 new on-sale full-bar licenses for specified census tracts with Los Angeles, issuing them at a rate of no more than 12 per year.
Author(s): Assm. González
AJ Analysis: Do not be deceived by rhetoric around recovery from the devastating fires. The author has explicitly stated during testimony that these licenses are tagged for Koreatown, Chinatown, Pico-Union, and Boyle Heights, all neighborhoods dominated by racial/ethnic minority populations. So on top of the known increases in harms from overconcentration, this will force communities that have been historically underinvested in to entertain their wealthier neighbors and assume the burden of harms from drinking. Truly a gift-wrapped bomb.
UPDATE: In the smallest of victories, the final bill reduces the total number of licensees unleashed on LA from 150 to 40. But compare this to the 10 extra licenses requested for the entire County of Colusa in AB 445, and you can see just how overboard this bill goes in seeking to warp these neighborhoods towards alcohol sales.
Version: 10/10
Status: Signed Into Law
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: licenses: County of San Luis Obispo.
Would grant an additional 10 licenses to San Luis Obispo County, despite their existing overconcentrated status.
Author(s): Assm. Addis
AJ Analysis: Alcohol outlet overconcentration is a significant driver of alcohol harm. San Luis Obispo County has a relatively dispersed population and limited public transit, along with a substantial youth population and an enormous alcohol-oriented tourism industry (the Paso Robles wine country from Sideways infamy is within its borders). Expanding the amount of drinking through increased numbers of outlets and outlet concentration can only exacerbate alcohol-related problems.
Version: 4/2
Status: Died in Committee (Assm. GO)
Summary: On-sale general public premises: drug testing devices.
Requires bars to provide fentanyl and fentanyl-analog tests, along with the “drink spiking” tests.
Author(s): Assm. Macedo
AJ Analysis: Any adulteration of alcohol with a depressant is dangerous. The usual suspects for spiking are benzodiazepines (including Rohypnol) as well as GHB and ketamine, and it is not known how often fentanyl is mixed into a drink. However, the entire illegal drug supply is adulterated, and deaths from inadvertent fentanyl consumption are not unknown. Considering the existing test strip requirements, it is a minimal additional burden on licensees.
Version: 10/1
Status: Signed Into Law
Summary: Crimes: vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.
Extends the current minimum probationary period for vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated to be as long as that for a nonfatal DUI.
Author(s): Assm. Patterson
AJ Analysis: This closes a strange loophole in sentencing guidelines, and amplifies the importance of arranging alternate transportation if you have been drinking.
Version: 10/3
Status: Signed Into Law
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: distilled spirits.
Increases the quantity of distilled spirits that can be sold by producers for individual takeaway from distilleries from 2.25 liters to 4.5 liters.
UPDATE: Allows out-of-state distillers to ship up to 2.25 liters of product to customers within California.
Author(s): Assm. Hoover
AJ Analysis: This is an obvious violation of the three-tier system and encourages exactly the kind of stockpiling that discourages intentionality. 4.5 liters is six normal liquor bottles, equating to approximately 100 standard drinks—well over the monthly USDA limit for overconsumption.
UPDATE: The new permissions for out-of-state distillers give overt lie to the claim that direct-to-consumer sales are necessary to protect the California spirits industry, and call into question the arguments that ever-expanding alcohol-on-demand rules help in-state businesses.
Version: 5/14
Status: Senate GO (Held Under Consideration)
Summary: Beer: labeling: temporary licensing.
Expands the regulations preventing retailers from selling beer from a tap without a proper sign to all licensees, but then exempts special event caterers from its provisions.
Author(s): Assm. Fong
AJ Analysis: This is a technical concern, although we would caution caterers that confusing their own floor staff can and should lead to liability (e.g., serving the wrong beer, and having that beer contain an allergen).
Version: 4/25
Status: Pulled by Author
Summary: School accountability: school climate report.
Would require schools to regularly administer the California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS), which is the primary vehicle for obtaining regional alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use statistics for California youth.
Author(s): Assm. Pellerin
AJ Analysis: Alcohol Justice, like many prevention-focused organizations, relies heavily on the data produced through CHKS to inform its campaigns and benchmark progress both internally and to state and federal grant makers. Unfortunately, it has been a mess since the pandemic, with inconsistent reporting, and seemingly arbitrary decisions to drop certain metrics and questions. Yet even before that, there were concerning gaps in its coverage. The California Department of Education, contracting through WestEd, has been unable to release CHKS reports for some counties for over a decade. (This, in turn, means the statewide reports will have been distorted by the counties that do report regularly.) As the federal government clearly states its intent to dial back the data collection it does on behalf of states, a robust, state-supported system is necessary, otherwise we can’t know what ATOD harms we’re preventing, we can’t know who we’re preventing them for, and we can’t know if we were effective. Over the long-term, establishing CHKS as a consistent and reliable data source is vital.
UPDATE: After amendments removed CHKS participation from the language and fell back on ad hoc school climate reporting by whatever criteria individual schools saw appropriate, the author withdrew the bill.
Version: 5/23
Status: Died in Committee (Assm. Approps)
Summary: Peace officers.
Prohibits police officers from carrying an issued firearm with a BAC > 0.0%, including when off-duty.
Author(s): Assm. Bryan
AJ Analysis: Acute alcohol intoxication’s relationship with violence is well known, as is the risk of firearm possession escalating conflict and creating fatal outcomes. Peace officers, more than anyone, should be obligated not to create a circumstance of severe injury and death where one did not need to exist. This creates one way to hold them accountable to that obligation.
Version: 6/23
Status: Gut and Amend – No Longer an Alcohol Bill
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: beer.
Modifies the legal definition of beer so that barley is not the only allowable grain in its production.
Author(s): Assembly Committee on GO
AJ Analysis: Harmonizes the definition of beer with other state and federal definitions. This should not create new categories of beverage to be sold as beer, in part because products such as sorghum beer which meet this definition do not meet the California one, yet are still taxed and controlled as beer, and not sold at notably higher ABVs than any other beer. At the same time, alcopop base has for decades been made with barley and therefore categorized as “beer,” while being one of the more risk-conducive products on shelves.
UPDATE: The bill was gutted and amended and no longer concerns alcohol or prevention policy.
2025 Senate Bills
Version: 7/2
Status: Pulled By Author (Assembly Health)
Summary: Substance abuse.
Adds “chronic alcoholism” to the list of criteria under which an individual can be mandated into treatment—as well as placed under other forms of state control—under the California’s CARE Court act.
Author(s): Sen. Menjivar
AJ Analysis: Abrupt detoxification of someone with severe alcohol use disorder without careful medical intervention can be fatal—as can threatening them into quitting without seeking such supervision. The justice system is in no way capable of doing this with the finesse necessary to prevent severe medical consequences including death, nor to support continued sobriety and prevent relapse. This concern is amplified by the use of stigmatizing and medically vague language in the bill. Other parties opposing the bill flag its cavalier use of “mental health” as a both a criterion for engagement in CARE Court and a benchmark for successful completion of state mandated programming. We flag similar concern around its use of “alcoholism,” and subsequent definition of “alcoholism” as “alcohol use disorder”. The prior term is essentially meaningless; the latter, flexible enough that it creates too flimsy a structure on which to empirically judge someone incapable of caring for themselves (which is the ostensible deciding factor for initiating CARE Court proceedings.) Alcohol Justice is already on the record supporting legislation that replaces “addiction” with “substance use disorder” in all state communications. The fact that the state adopted that change but continues to refer to “alcoholism” reflects the stigma which it is bringing to bear on people with AUD. Make no mistake, untreated AUD kills. A legislature that is incessantly bowing to calls to encourage greater alcohol consumption should be obligated to also provide services to help people harmed by alcohol. But structures of coercion and criminality are the cruelest and often least effective ways to do so.
Version: 10/6
Status: Signed Into Law
Summary: Alcoholic beverages: additional licenses: hospitality zone.
Generates 20 additional full-bar licenses for San Francisco despite existing overconcentration, with all 20 reserved for an area around Union Square and downtown.
Author(s): Sen. Wiener
AJ Position: OPPOSE—Overconcentration drives a large number of alcohol-related harms, and this bill quite intentionally, overconcentrates a small stretch of downtown. All evidence points to the city intending to use SB 395 synergistically with the 4 A.M. Bar Bill to build a “Bourbon St.”-style alcohol tourism destination in the heart of the city. This will create a hotspot for harms, distributing risks out into surrounding neighborhoods, cities, and suburbs.
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.