With a little thing called the Olympics coming to Utah, this year’s omnibus alcohol bill was very friendly to hospitality interests. How close a restaurant or hotel bar licensee could be to a park was tweaked. Foreign driver licenses will also be accepted instead of just passports, much to the relief of tourism hotspots across the state.
The law barely went into effect and then lawmakers were asked to reconsider Utah’s tough new 100% ID check policy. Restaurants were seeing a big impact from it, so Rep. Steve Eliason passed a bill to let them go back to making a judgment call to demand ID if someone looks younger than 35 years old.
A bill to loosen restrictions on flavored alcohol products in grocery and convenience stores was introduced, but never went anywhere.
