According to ABC General Counsel Bob Hill, mixing a single cocktail does not qualify as adulteration, but putting several in a pitcher does. The problem, as ABC spokesman Dean Argo explains it in an interview with R Street Institute Vice President Cameron Smith, is that the alcohol in a pitcher of mixed drinks tends to settle to the bottom. “The person who is poured the first or second drink may receive only a .25 to .5 ounce of alcohol,” Argo tells Smith, “where a person receiving the third, fourth or even fifth pour may receive much more alcohol than mix…”

Pressing Argo on the ABC’s logic, Smith asks whether it would be legal for a bar to sell a pitcher of margarita mix alongside six shots of tequila. “I can’t [see] anything that would prohibit that,” Argo says. “The patron would [be] able to tell exactly the amount of alcohol he or she is getting and the server/bartender would be able to know when the patron becomes overserved.”

Smith is puzzled: “So the real danger is the alcohol settling in the pitcher, but that’s only a problem if a bartender mixes it? If the patron does the exact same thing on the other side of the bar, then it’s completely reasonable….You truly have to be overserved to buy that kind of nonsense.”

Trying to impress upon Smith the hazards of tolerating margaritas in pitchers, Argo trots out a parade of horribles. “If one licensee is allowed to serve mixed drinks in a pitcher,” he says, “then other licensees would have to be allowed to serve mixed drinks.” That could include not only margaritas, Argo warns, but even rum and Coke. Who would want to live in such a world?

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