Charlotte County, FL Public Conduct: Public Alcohol Use (2026)

Sec. 1-3-5 makes it unlawful to possess an open container or consume an alcoholic beverage upon any public right-of-way within the unincorporated area of Charlotte County, and the ordinance defines possession broadly: you're covered if you're merely handling the container or it's tucked in your clothes or on your body. Public right-of-way is defined at Sec. 1-3-12 to include streets, alleys, sidewalks, parking lots and highways, paved or not, plus road shoulders, and it extends to county parks and facilities except where the county's parks chapter (Ch.

1-11) expressly allows alcohol. An open container under the same definitions section covers any can, bottle, cup or other receptacle that's been opened, that's configured so someone can drink from it, or whose factory seal has been broken, even if it's now empty. Sec. 1-3-6 carves out exemptions for temporary-use-permitted events like circuses and fairs, county lessees and concessionaires whose agreements specifically allow alcohol, board-authorized activities, and anyone collecting discarded containers for trash or recycling without drinking from them. Sec. 1-3-7 lets a witness's own tasting, smelling or handling experience with alcohol serve as valid courtroom testimony that a beverage was alcoholic.

Because Sec. 1-3-8 limits the whole article to unincorporated Charlotte County, residents of Punta Gorda, the county's only incorporated city, fall outside this particular ban and are governed by whatever open-container rule the city itself adopts.