San Luis Obispo County, CA Public Conduct: Public Alcohol Use (2026)

16, Consumption of Alcoholic Beverages, contains two distinct county rules. 010 bars any intoxicated person from willfully appearing or remaining on any public highway, street, alley, park, playground or public place anywhere in the unincorporated county, whether or not the person is in a vehicle. 020 goes further for the town of Avila Beach specifically: it is unlawful there to drink or otherwise consume any alcoholic beverage, including wine or beer, on any street, sidewalk, alley or highway, a stricter open-container rule than the county-wide intoxication ban because it prohibits the act of drinking itself, not just the resulting intoxication.

The section closes with a savings clause stating it does not make punishable any act already prohibited by state law, so it layers onto, rather than displaces, California's own open-container and public-intoxication statutes. Both sections trace to 1968-1977 ordinances codified from the county's prior code (former Sections 5-015 and 5-030), and neither carries its own penalty schedule, so violations fall to the county's General Penalty chapter. 020 treats each day a violation continues as a separate offense. Because Avila Beach is an unincorporated coastal community governed directly by the county rather than its own city council, this section applies to the beachfront commercial strip and adjacent residential streets rather than the county seat, the incorporated City of San Luis Obispo, which enforces its own separate municipal alcohol rules.