Bay County, MI Public Conduct: Public Alcohol Use (2026)

Part 41, Article V of the county code, part of Ordinance No. 24 adopted April 12, 1983 and amended July 12, 1994, bans public drinking countywide. 2320 (Sec. 23-20) makes a person guilty of a misdemeanor if they consume liquor on public streets, highways, alleys, sidewalks or any public way open to vehicular or pedestrian traffic, or in public parking lots, or in private lots available for private use located in a business, commercial or industrial area as defined by the local zoning ordinance. 2310 to mean any alcohol, spirits, wine or beer, and any patented or unpatented liquid or solid containing them that's capable of being consumed as a beverage.

The rule reaches unincorporated Bay County and any township that hasn't adopted its own separate open-container ordinance; cities like Bay City and Essexville, and each of the county's townships, retain the power to set their own, potentially different, open-container rules within their own limits. 2350, and each occurrence is treated as a separate offense. The ordinance targets the act of consuming liquor in these locations, not merely possessing an open container, so a closed container carried through a public parking lot is not, by this section's plain language, the same offense as drinking one there.