Alcohol Justice: Public Health & Safety Kicked to the Curb Again as California Assembly "GO" Committee Approves Dangerous 4 a.m. Bar Bill Experiment

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SB 930 Author Senator Wiener Continues to Push "Junk Science" Over Solid Peer-Reviewed Data to Support Alcohol Sales Between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Alcohol Justice and the California Alcohol Policy Alliance (CAPA) condemned a one-person majority vote of the California State Assembly Governmental Organization Committee (GO) yesterday to allow SB 930 to proceed. The "gut & amend" bill is Senator Scott Wiener's 4^th attempt to disrupt the protections of uniform 2 a.m. last call in California by launching a 7-city pilot program to generate nightlife alcohol sales profits at the expense of public health and safety. All of his previous attempts have failed.

"In the face of 40 years of unimpeachable, compelling evidence and passionate opposition by some committee members that increasing hours of alcohol sales would increase harms, a one-vote majority of this committee negligently sided with the author, turning a blind eye to the reality of more early-morning alcohol-related violence, ER visits, impaired driving, and traffic chaos," stated Cruz Avila, Executive Director / CEO of Alcohol Justice.

The bill's author stumbled again through a predictable weak defense of his gift to late night alcohol-related businesses citing meaningless, cherry-picked, disparate, numbers, and a faulty theory that people make bad decisions all day long, and not just after leaving a bar in the middle of the night possibly fatigued and inebriated.

In reality, SB 930 will spread alcohol overconsumption, loss of life, injury, and nuisance across the state. Last call times—what the scientific literature calls "trading hours"—are a backbone of maintaining alcohol as a safe and legal product. The Community Guide, a CDC-led handbook of public health best practices compiled in part by experts at the University of California, Los Angeles, identifies maintaining existing last call times as one of the 10 key policies for reducing the harms from reckless drinking and from alcohol-related motor vehicle deaths.

According to the CDC, California currently suffers 11,000 alcohol-related deaths per year at a cost of $34 billion with direct government costs of $18 billion. The only benefit of selling alcohol between 2 and 4 a.m. will be greater profits to bar, restaurant, and club owners in the party zones the bill will create in 7 cities. While the public and all levels of government will be forced to continue to cover the costs of cleaning up the mess that follows.

In response to the author's continued mischaracterization of SB 930 as a 'local control' measure, there is consensus among opponents that there is no such thing as local control in alcohol policy and that the harm from one city's decision to change last-call times will "splash" over to every surrounding community.

The bill must now pass through the Assembly Appropriations Committee and then an Assembly floor vote, before it heads back to the California Senate for two committee hearings and a Senate floor vote. All of this must happen before the end of August. The legislature goes out for a summer break on July 1, returning August 1. Alcohol Justice and CAPA encourage the public to continue to oppose the bill.

TAKE ACTION to STOP SB 930: https://bit.ly/39xULWc or Text JUSTICE to 313131

READ MORE:

• The Late Night Threat: Science, Harms, and Costs of Extending Bar Service Hours
• The High Cost of the 4 A.M. Bar Bill: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Extended Alcohol Trading Hours in Los Angeles

TAKE ACTION to STOP SB 930: https://bit.ly/39xULWc or Text JUSTICE to 313131

CONTACT:
Michael Scippa 415 548-0492
Mayra Jimenez 323 683-4687

SOURCE Alcohol Justice; California Alcohol Policy Alliance