St. Louis County, MO Public Conduct: Public Alcohol Use (2026)

Section 716.405, part of the county's Petty Offenses Code (Chapter 716), reads in full: "It shall be unlawful for any person to consume any alcoholic beverage while in a moving motor vehicle upon highways, roadways, or alleyways in unincorporated St. Louis County or upon arterial roads, as defined by Chapter 1202 SLCRO." The reach of the ban is broader than the chapter's general Section 716.020 territorial limit, which confines Sections 716.040 through 716.180 to unincorporated areas only; Section 716.405 sits outside that range and separately extends onto "arterial roads," defined at Section 1202.010(4) as "any road designated by the St.

Louis County Council as part of the County arterial road system authorized by RSMo § 137.558." Because many county-designated arterial roads run through incorporated municipalities, the practical effect is that the moving-vehicle drinking ban follows those specific roads into cities that would otherwise write their own alcohol ordinances. The prohibition is limited to the act of consuming while the vehicle is moving, which distinguishes it from the county's separate public-drunkenness ban at Section 716.160, punishing being intoxicated "on any street, highway, thoroughfare, place of amusement, hotel, motel, restaurant, public building or other public place," and from the parks alcohol rule at Section 616.060, governing bringing or drinking alcohol inside a county park.

A driver or passenger with an open container who isn't drinking from it while the vehicle is underway falls outside the literal text of Section 716.405.