I’m Rocky Brancato, founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm. I spent years as a police academy instructor teaching officers what they may and may not do during a stop, and today our attorneys defend underage possession, furnishing, open house party, and unlicensed sale charges throughout Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties.

What Are Florida’s Alcohol Offenses, and Which Ones Are Crimes?

Florida’s alcohol offenses are spread across four chapters of the statutes, and the table below collects the ones our attorneys see charged in Tampa Bay. Six are crimes. The seventh, an open container in a vehicle, is a traffic infraction. The disorderly intoxication statute belongs on this list as well, and our separate guide to disorderly conduct and disorderly intoxication covers it in depth.

Two things about this list surprise most clients. First, none of the underage offenses triggers a driver license suspension. Section 322.056, the “use it and lose it” statute, now applies only to drug offenses under chapter 893 by persons under 18, as amended in 2019, and the federal government’s 2024 Florida underage drinking report confirms Florida has no use/lose law for alcohol. Second, the fake ID charge is the most serious offense on the list by a wide margin, because a fictitious or unlawfully issued license is a felony while the drinking it was used for is a minor misdemeanor.

Is It a Crime to Possess Alcohol Under 21 in Florida?

Yes. Section 562.111, Florida Statutes, makes it a second-degree misdemeanor for anyone under 21 to possess an alcoholic beverage, and a first-degree misdemeanor for a second violation after a prior conviction. Two exceptions apply: employees 18 and older who handle alcohol in the scope of their jobs at licensed establishments, and students 18 and older who taste, without swallowing, as part of an accredited culinary or hospitality curriculum under supervision.

Possession cases turn on two elements the State frequently cannot prove. The first is that the container actually held alcohol. In B.B. v. State, 117 So. 3d 442 (Fla. 2d DCA 2013), a deputy found an open Four Loko can in a car occupied by a teenager, threw the can away, and never smelled or tested the liquid; the Second District Court of Appeal, whose decisions bind the courts of Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties, reversed the adjudication because the label on an open can does not prove its contents and the State offered nothing else. The second element is possession itself. When alcohol is found in a car or at a party with several people present, the State must prove that the accused had dominion and control over it and knew it was there, and mere proximity is not enough.

Our attorneys also see officers treat an underage possession stop as a license to search. A person under 21 holding a cup does not give an officer probable cause to search a vehicle or a backpack for anything else, and when a possession charge produces a drug or weapon charge, the suppression motion is often the more important fight.

Can You Be Charged for Giving Alcohol to Someone Under 21?

Yes, and the statute reaches parents, older siblings, roommates, and hosts as well as bartenders and store clerks. Section 562.11(1)(a), Florida Statutes, provides that a person “may not sell, give, serve, or permit to be served alcoholic beverages to a person under 21 years of age.” A first violation is a second-degree misdemeanor. A second violation within one year of a prior conviction is a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. There is no parental exception in Florida; a parent who pours a glass of wine for a 19-year-old at dinner has violated the statute, although in our experience that case is almost never filed unless something else went wrong.

The statute contains a complete defense that most people do not know applies to them. Under subsection (1)(d), any person charged with furnishing alcohol has a complete defense if the buyer or recipient falsely represented that he or she was 21, appeared to a prudent person to be 21, and presented a driver license, state identification card, passport, or military ID that the person carefully checked and relied on in good faith. The defense is not limited to licensed businesses. A host who asked for and examined an ID before serving a guest is entitled to it.

Bartenders and servers face a separate danger. The same conduct that supports a criminal charge under section 562.11 is the basis for civil liability under Florida’s dram shop statute, section 768.125, when a person under 21 who was served later injures someone, and the licensee’s administrative case before the Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco proceeds on a lower standard of proof than the criminal case. Our attorneys coordinate the criminal defense with the licensee’s administrative and civil exposure, because a plea entered to resolve a misdemeanor quickly can be used against the server and the business in both other proceedings.

What Is an Open House Party Charge, and How Does the State Prove It?

An open house party charge is Florida’s social host crime, and it is the alcohol offense most often filed against parents. Section 856.015, Florida Statutes, makes it a second-degree misdemeanor for a person in control of a residence to allow a social gathering to take place there when the person knows that a minor is possessing or consuming alcohol or drugs and fails to take reasonable steps to prevent it. A second violation is a first-degree misdemeanor, and so is any violation in which the minor’s drinking causes or contributes to serious bodily injury or death, whether to the minor or to someone else. “Minor” for this statute means anyone under 21.

The Florida Supreme Court set the elements in State v. Manfredonia, 649 So. 2d 1388 (Fla. 1995), a case in which defendants charged under the statute challenged it as unconstitutionally vague. The court upheld the statute but described what the State must prove in a way that has protected defendants ever since: an adult in control of the premises knowingly allowed a social gathering; a minor possessed or consumed alcohol or drugs during it; the adult had actual knowledge of that possession or consumption; and the adult allowed the party to continue and failed to take any reasonable steps to prevent it. The court called this “a great burden” and said the State must prove that the adult “stood by and did nothing” in the face of actual knowledge. A parent who was asleep upstairs, who was not home, or who told the teenagers to pour out the beer and thought they had complied has not committed the offense.

The Second District applied those elements in 2023 in Davis v. State, No. 2D2021-2987 (Fla. 2d DCA May 10, 2023), a Pasco County open house party prosecution that turned on conflicting accounts of what the homeowner knew. The court reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial because a detective was allowed to vouch for the credibility of a prosecution witness and disparage a defense witness, an error the court held went to the heart of a case built entirely on whose account the jury believed. Open house party trials are credibility contests about knowledge, and our attorneys prepare them that way.

Is Selling Alcohol Without a License a Felony in Florida Now?

Yes, when the sale happens at a commercial establishment. Chapter 2024-77, Laws of Florida, effective July 1, 2024, rewrote section 562.12, Florida Statutes. Selling alcohol without a license, or beyond the terms of a license, remains a second-degree misdemeanor in the ordinary case. But any person, including a licensee, who unlawfully sells alcohol at a commercial establishment or “keeps and maintains a place where alcoholic beverages are sold or intended to be sold unlawfully” now commits a third-degree felony and must pay a fine of not less than $5,000 and not more than $10,000. A second or subsequent violation is a second-degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison with a mandatory fine of $15,000 to $20,000. The same law added unlicensed alcohol sales to the public nuisance statute, section 893.138, so a location used for unlawful sales on more than two occasions in a year can be shut down through local nuisance abatement.

Most articles online still describe unlicensed sale as a misdemeanor. It is not, and the new felony reaches businesses that never thought of themselves as bars: hookah lounges and after-hours clubs selling drinks without a license, event promoters charging a cover that includes alcohol at a rented venue, food trucks and pop-ups at festivals, and short-term rental hosts running ticketed parties. A restaurant with a beer and wine license that serves liquor, or a licensee that sells after hours or off premises, is selling “except as permitted by her or his license” and is within the felony provision if it happens at the establishment. The Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco investigates these cases with undercover buys, and the business owner and the bartender who poured the drink can both be charged.

How Common Are Alcohol Enforcement Cases in Florida?

Common enough that a Florida bar or store has roughly a one-in-eight chance of failing a state compliance check. According to the federal government’s 2024 State Report on Underage Drinking Prevention and Enforcement for Florida, state agencies checked 5,164 licensees for compliance in the 12 months ending December 31, 2022, and 638 failed; of 3,400 random decoy checks, 406 licensees sold to the underage decoy (SAMHSA, 2024 Florida State Report). Each failed check is a potential section 562.11 charge against the clerk or server who made the sale, and an administrative case against the license. The same report, citing the CDC’s Alcohol-Related Disease Impact data for 2020 and 2021, attributes 246 deaths of Floridians under 21 to alcohol, which is the statistic prosecutors and judges have in mind when they treat a furnishing or open house party charge as more than a technicality.

Research on social host laws explains why the Legislature keeps these statutes on the books and why juries take them seriously. In a study published in the Journal of Health Economics, economist Angela Dills found that state social host liability laws for minors reduced drunk-driving fatality rates among 18- to 20-year-olds by about 9 percent, with the effect coming from less driving after drinking rather than less drinking (Dills, Social host liability for minors and underage drunk-driving accidents, 29 J. Health Econ. 241 (2010)). Our attorneys use that literature in a different way: it shows that the statutes are aimed at hosts who let intoxicated minors drive away, and a parent who collected keys and kept everyone in the house is the opposite of the person the law targets.

How Are Alcohol Cases Handled in Hillsborough County?

Most first-time underage possession and furnishing cases in Hillsborough County are resolved through diversion, and most adult defendants never see a jail cell. Officers frequently issue a notice to appear rather than making a physical arrest for a second-degree misdemeanor, so the case begins with a court date rather than a booking at Orient Road Jail. The Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office operates a Misdemeanor Intervention Program for first-time offenders that a defendant may enter only with the consent of the assigned Assistant State Attorney; on completion the State drops the charge, which in turn makes the arrest eligible for expunction. In our experience an underage possession or misrepresentation-of-age charge with no companion offense is routinely approved for the program when defense counsel asks before arraignment, and rarely when the defendant has already entered a plea.

Enforcement in Hillsborough concentrates where the crowds are. Ybor City and SoHo on weekend nights, Gasparilla and the downtown festival calendar, and the tailgates at Raymond James Stadium produce the bulk of underage possession and misrepresentation citations, often through joint operations between Tampa Police and Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco agents who run decoy buys at bars and convenience stores. University of South Florida and University of Tampa students face a second proceeding as well: a criminal citation for possession or a fake ID is reported to the university and triggers a student conduct case with its own deadlines, and our attorneys handle both because a diversion agreement in county court is often the best evidence in the conduct hearing.

How Do Our Attorneys Defend Alcohol Charges?

By holding the State to elements it often treats as assumed, and by moving quickly toward diversion when the evidence is strong:

1. What was in the cup. Under B.B., the State must prove the beverage contained alcohol. When the officer poured it out, did not test it, and did not administer a breath test, the possession charge fails.
2. Whose alcohol it was. In a car or at a party, constructive possession requires proof of dominion, control, and knowledge. Proximity to a cooler is not possession.
3. The ID check defense. Under section 562.11(1)(d), any person who carefully checked an apparently valid ID and acted in good faith has a complete defense to a furnishing charge. We obtain the store video and the ID the buyer used.
4. Knowledge and reasonable steps. In open house party cases the State must prove the host actually knew minors were drinking and did nothing. Manfredonia makes that a heavy burden, and Davis shows the Second District will reverse when the trial becomes a credibility contest decided by improper vouching.
5. The fake ID felony. A section 322.212 charge requires proof that the accused knew the license was fictitious or unlawfully issued. An altered date of birth is a second-degree misdemeanor, and prosecutors frequently agree to reduce a felony fake ID charge to the misdemeanor or to the section 562.11(2) misrepresentation offense for a first-time defendant.
6. The felony sale charge. In section 562.12 cases we contest whether the location is a “commercial establishment,” whether the transaction was a sale at all, and whether the accused, as opposed to the business owner, was the seller. The mandatory $5,000 fine attaches only to the felony, so the misdemeanor-versus-felony distinction is the case.
7. Diversion before plea. For clients who prefer certainty, the Misdemeanor Intervention Program or a withhold of adjudication resolves the case without a conviction, and a dismissal after diversion preserves eligibility to expunge the arrest.

For more about our defense strategies, visit our Tampa criminal traffic attorney page, which covers the driving offenses, including DUI, that frequently accompany an alcohol charge.

What Should You Do After an Alcohol Citation or Arrest in Tampa?

Read the notice to appear carefully, do not miss the court date, and talk to a lawyer before arraignment, because that is when diversion is decided. A notice to appear for a second-degree misdemeanor looks like a traffic ticket, and clients regularly treat it like one, either by ignoring it, which produces a warrant, or by showing up alone and pleading no contest to “get it over with,” which produces a permanent criminal record for an offense that would have been dismissed through diversion. Do not contact the store, the bar, or the other people at the party to discuss what happened; those conversations become witness statements. If the charge involves a fake ID, do not attempt to explain where the ID came from to anyone but your attorney, because that explanation is the knowledge element.

Frequently Asked Questions About Alcohol Offenses in Florida

Is possession of alcohol by a minor a misdemeanor or a felony in Florida?

It is a second-degree misdemeanor under section 562.111 for a first offense and a first-degree misdemeanor for a second conviction. It is never a felony. The felony risk in an underage drinking case comes from a fake ID under section 322.212, which is a third-degree felony.

Do you lose your driver license for underage possession of alcohol in Florida?

No. Section 322.056 requires license suspension only for drug offenses under chapter 893 committed by persons under 18; as amended in 2019, the statute does not cover alcohol offenses. A conviction for underage possession or misrepresentation of age has no effect on driving privileges unless the case also involves a DUI or a traffic offense.

Can parents be charged if teenagers drink at their house in Florida?

Yes, under the open house party statute, section 856.015, if the parents knew minors were drinking and failed to take reasonable steps to stop it. The Florida Supreme Court held in State v. Manfredonia that the State must prove the parent had actual knowledge and stood by and did nothing, so a parent who was unaware, or who acted once aware, has not committed the crime. The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. treats the knowledge element as the whole case in these prosecutions.

What happens if you get caught with a fake ID in Florida?

Possessing or displaying a fictitious or unlawfully issued driver license or ID card is a third-degree felony under section 322.212 punishable by up to five years in prison, and using it to buy alcohol adds a second-degree misdemeanor under section 562.11(2). A card that is only altered as to date of birth is a second-degree misdemeanor. First-time defendants are frequently able to resolve the felony as a misdemeanor or through diversion, and our attorneys treat that reduction as the goal because a felony arrest record follows a student into every job application.

Is it legal for a parent to give alcohol to their own child in Florida?

No. Section 562.11(1)(a) has no exception for parents, and giving alcohol to a person under 21 is a second-degree misdemeanor regardless of the relationship. The only statutory exceptions involve employment at licensed establishments and supervised tasting in accredited culinary programs.

Is selling alcohol without a license a felony in Florida?

At a commercial establishment, yes, since July 1, 2024. Section 562.12 makes an unlawful sale at a commercial establishment, or maintaining a place where alcohol is sold unlawfully, a third-degree felony with a mandatory fine of $5,000 to $10,000, and a second violation a second-degree felony with a $15,000 to $20,000 fine. An isolated unlicensed sale that is not at a commercial establishment remains a second-degree misdemeanor.

Can an underage drinking charge be expunged in Florida?

Yes, if the charge is dismissed, including a dismissal after completing a diversion program, and you have no prior adjudication. A withhold of adjudication after a plea can be sealed rather than expunged. The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. structures dispositions in these cases around expunction eligibility, because for a college student the record matters more than the sentence.

If you or your son or daughter has received a notice to appear or been arrested for underage possession, furnishing alcohol, an open house party, a fake ID, or unlicensed sale anywhere in Tampa Bay, the attorneys of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, will pursue diversion before arraignment, handle any university conduct proceeding, and contest the elements the State assumes. Call (813) 727-7159. Diversion is decided at or before arraignment, roughly 30 days after the citation, and it is rarely available after a plea has been entered.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.