When it comes to tippling, Colorado’s western border has long been a line of liquor demarcation.
On the Colorado side, run-of-the-mill liquor laws prevail. But across the border, Utah has been a sort of booze Oz.
That changes July 1, when new laws bring Utah’s drinking regulations in line with the rest of the country.
“This is taking Utah to a sense of normalcy,” said Shawn Stinson, director of communications for the Salt Lake Convention & Visitors Bureau. “It’s fantastic.”
That sentiment is being echoed from Brewski’s in Ogden, a Salt Lake City suburb, to the Tavernacle Social Club, which is just down the street from the city’s Mormon Tabernacle — the headquarters for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Mormon leaders who have been behind Utah’s history of liquor laws.
Those Beehive State laws have included club memberships, brown-bagged hooch, meters on liquor bottles and “Zion curtains.”
They have confused and infuriated drinkers, made the state the butt of bar jokes and likely had a dampening effect on the state’s $6 billion tourism industry.
“A lot of people have thought we were very strange,” said Sharon Mackey, spokeswoman for the Utah Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission.
Not dry, just quirky
Tourism officials and those in the bar business say too many out-of-staters mistakenly have thought Utah is a dry state because of the quirky laws and the fact that the Mormon Church tells its members to abstain from alcohol.
“This will do nothing but improve things,” said Susy Hadley, manager of The Tavernacle, known for its dueling-piano entertainment as well as its cocktails.
Hadley said a foreign couple recently came into the social club wanting an after-dinner cocktail and left when they learned they first had to buy a membership.
The new laws do away with the membership requirement for bars, which are otherwise termed “private clubs” in Utah. The clubs can serve full-strength beer and other liquor.
Taverns may serve only 3.2 percent alcohol beer; that law will stand.
The current membership law, which was supposed to inhibit bar-hopping and shield Mormons from exposure to alcohol, has been in effect for 40 years. But it had turned into a regulatory joke and a confusing bane for tourists.
Buying a three-week membership to a club for around $4 enables the “member” to bring in up to seven guests per visit. A pricier $12-to-$16 annual membership allows the purchaser to bring in unlimited guests.
“I hadn’t paid for a membership in 12 years,” Stinson said.
July 1 is also the date on which the glass partitions between bartenders and barstool customers in liquor-serving restaurants will come down.
The 2-foot-high partitions, long known as “Zion curtains,” have been one of the quirkier aspects of Utah’s drinking laws. Bartenders have had to stroll around the partitions, designed to cut down on overimbibing, to give customers their drinks or have servers deliver them.
Even the Mormon Church is calling the change in regulations more “reasonable.”
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is committed to reasonable regulations on alcohol that reduce underage drinking, overconsumption and drunk driving. In asserting these principles, we are pleased to have joined with members of the Utah State Legislature, the governor, those representing hospitality industry and restaurants and others in addressing the broad spectrum of Utah citizens,” church spokesman Michael Purdy wrote in a prepared statement.
The church, which counts 60 percent of Utah’s residents and 80 percent of its legislators in its membership, did not try to block changes to the liquor laws as it has in the past.
This time, church officials worked with the other interested parties to lighten up on serving rules but tighten up penalties for drinking offenses and discourage underage drinking.
Among those measures: Second-time DUI offenders will lose their licenses and vehicles. Underage drinkers with fake IDs will lose their right to a driver’s license for a year or until they are 21 for more than one offense. And anyone who looks younger than 35 will have their IDs electronically swiped at all bars.
More changes may be on the way.
Salt Lake City forbids having more than two bars in a square block, and there is a push to alter that law. Such a move would open the door for Salt Lake to have a downtown with clustered clubs like Lower Downtown in Denver.
Evolving laws
The changes cap a long history of laws “that people have scratched their heads over,” Stinson said.
It began in 1955, when “locker clubs” sprang up so that drinkers could bring in their hooch and place it in private lockers for their own use.
In 1959, a law allowed drinkers to take brown-bagged spirits into restaurants.
In 1968, voters nixed a measure that would have allowed restaurants to sell liquor. But a year later, state-owned liquor outlets in restaurants were allowed to sell 2-ounce mini bottles like those handed out on airlines.
Nearly two decades later, restaurants were allowed to serve those mini-bottles to customers at their tables.
Brown-bagging and mini-bottles were phased out in 1990 when metered devices were mandated on all liquor bottles to make sure no that more than an ounce of liquor would go into a cocktail.
That’s when the “Zion curtains” went up. They were not legally mandated, but they were erected in response to a law that said people couldn’t be seated where liquor was dispensed or stored.
Last year, Utah lawmakers increased metered pours to an ounce and a half.
Mackey said this year’s changes really do represent a major evolution in Utah’s drinking laws.
“Now, we’re not so different from anyone else.”
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com
