As a tavern owner, I’ve seen it happen a million times. You’re sitting in a bar, trading laughs with friends, when someone gets a good old-fashioned “great idea.” Maybe it’s an ambitious social plan for tomorrow – sunrise hike, anyone? Maybe it’s a grand plan for a new business venture. Maybe it’s promising to set up a lonesome pal with that one cousin of yours long before you’ve ever talked to her about it. 

One thing I know for certain about these back-of-napkin plans: While they seem reasonable in the dark of night, most folks agree that it’s best to ignore them once they, and you, see the light of day. 

This is exactly how it should work. When a bar clicks, it’s suspended from time, space, and reality itself. It’s a place where you can dream big so long as you’ve got small change for the jukebox. 

Half-formed ideas must always be able to call neighborhood bars home. 

Where they don’t belong is the Colorado General Assembly. That’s my problem with Senate Bill 26-164, a new piece of legislation that would allow restaurants, bars, and taverns to sling so-called “hemp-derived” high-THC beverages for on-site consumption alongside alcohol – in direct contradiction to the regulated cannabis system the voters championed when they passed Amendment 64.

Look, I appreciate the instinct. Alcohol use is on a downswing in Colorado, and spectacular bars and restaurants are forced to shutter every day because the margins just don’t cut it anymore. Marijuana sales, meanwhile, appear headed for the ditch.  All of this while Colorado faces a $1.5 billion budget deficit. A new product to draw in new customers and tax revenue for the state? It’s a lightbulb moment coaxed out by the hum of a neon sign. 

And then, the morning after? Reality bites. In my experience, there’s just no way for bars to safely sell these “hemp” drinks – made with up to 10 milligrams of THC per serving, per the bill – alongside alcohol.

Let the record reflect that I’m no pearl-clutcher. The bar I own has been repeatedly voted the best bar in Routt County, all while going up against ski-town heavyweights in Steamboat Springs. I’ve bartended at Pete’s Satire Lounge in Denver, where part of the fun is not knowing what may wander in off Colfax. After eight years of board service, my caricature hangs on the wall of the historic Denver Press Club, one of Denver’s oldest continuously operating bars.

What I know from that work is what all good bartenders know: My customers will have a good time so long as I do what I can to keep them safe. With alcohol, that’s easy. I know which regulars take on a fighting stance whenever they drink Pendleton and refuse to pour them anything except one Michelob Ultra. I know exactly how much alcohol goes into a Long Island Iced Tea or Mind Eraser, which is why you’ll never catch me drinking one or serving two. 

Colorado’s dram shop laws prohibit me from serving a visibly intoxicated person, and you better believe that I know the tells: slurred speech, unsteady gait, loud volume, poor judgment, and being overly generous. The hospitality craft of reading drunk people is older than the United States. 

None of that holds true with the THC beverages contemplated by this bill, because THC impairment just hits different than alcohol, with a slower onset and none of the tells drummed into bartenders over half a century of case law. 

Longstanding definitions of “visibly intoxicated” rely on a bartender’s assessment at the point of sale. But someone who orders a THC seltzer at 7:15 p.m. may not show the full impact until 8:15 or 9:15, long after they’ve presented as sober and attempted to order another. As a bartender, would I be expected to cut someone off hours before they’re impaired, just to be safe? Or should we allow them to continue ordering whatever they’d like until they’re well past the point of no return? 

Nearly 100 years of science gives bartenders a good rule of thumb for assessing the impacts of alcohol: A standard drink is a twelve-ounce beer, a five-ounce pour of wine or an ounce and a half of spirit. Each one adds roughly 0.02 percent to a patron’s blood alcohol. and the body burns off about one standard drink an hour. This is the same math behind every 0.08 percent per se law in the country, and it’s what every bartender learns during responsible vendor training.

We’ve got nothing like that for THC. Not because researchers haven’t tried, but because, as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Congress in 2017, research can’t predict THC impairment with dosage the same way it can with alcohol. 

The research is clear on the dangers of combining THC and booze. Mixing isn’t just toggling between “drunk” and “high” depending on what you last consumed. The effects compound, resulting in greater impairment and less predictable behavior than either substance alone. Every bartender has cut somebody off who was fine on their second beer and a stranger to themselves on their third. Senate Bill 26-164 asks us to make that call with a second substance in the mix that we can’t see, can’t smell and can’t pour-count. 

I say all of this not because I’m a narc, but because I’m a business owner – and because insurers, who are temperamentally inclined to be narcs, will point it out. Liquor liability insurance is underwritten on alcohol risk. Alcohol is risky, so insurance is expensive. Adding THC amplifies that risk, so most liquor liability carriers explicitly prohibit the sale of other psychoactive substances. If this bill becomes law, what changes? THC remains federally illegal, and there’s barely any case law on what happens when a poly-impaired bar customer causes a fatal crash. The few insurers willing to take on either risk will charge a premium that devours whatever new revenue this bill promises.

While I sell alcohol, I’m no THC opponent. Years ago, when I was the founding deputy director of Colorado’s Office of Marijuana Coordination, we had a saying as we were helping write the state’s groundbreaking cannabis laws: “The history of mankind is the history of taking the edge off.” The point of regulation was never to pass judgment. It was to come up with a system that allowed for safe use, since use itself was inevitable – and, to its credit, Colorado’s homegrown marijuana industry has continuously come to the table to accept regulation as the price of legitimacy and to keep Coloradans safe. 

This bill short-circuits nearly fourteen years of collaboration. It gives backdoor market access to out-of-state moneymakers who want to sidestep our tried-and-true laws with less regulation and no enforcement history. 

It does that through a narrow federal loophole that closes in November. In fact, that’s the bill’s entire point: Hemp- and cannabis-derived THC beverages can already be sold through Colorado’s licensed commercial marketplace for cannabis products. Intoxicating hemp beverages can’t be, because they’re their own weird thing. A Colorado-grown cannabis beverage is tracked from seed to sale and backed by years of iterative rulemaking to ensure its safety. The beverages contemplated by this bill are commonly manufactured out of state and subject to no comparable guardrails. We want to sell the riskier of the two products at bars, of all places? 

At successful establishments, impairment is not the product, so we don’t need more of it. What joints like mine sell is in front of the bar, not behind it: the pace, the music, the décor, the regulars nursing a respectful, conversational buzz. Adding a second, untested class of impairment makes a bar a less inviting place to hang your hat.

Some plans belong on a bar napkin. This one is headed to the Colorado Senate Finance Committee. Lawmakers should make sure it doesn’t see the light of day. 

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