POJOAQUE — Five years ago, the wall behind the cash registers at Kokoman Fine Wines & Liquor teemed with an extensive selection of miniature bottles of alcohol.
Though lawmakers banned the sale of so-called minis for off-site consumption under a sweeping liquor reform bill that took effect July 1, 2021, the wall still looks the same.
While Kokoman is complying with the law, small bottles of liquor continue to occupy the wall.
As predicted, liquor stores across New Mexico have replaced the banned 50-milliliter bottles, equivalent to a standard shot, with containers twice the size — and twice the amount of alcohol — to skirt the law.
The ban on “minis,” which was inserted as a last-minute amendment to a 2021 liquor reform bill, was touted as an effort to combat drunken driving in a state that has for decades had the nation’s highest alcohol-related death rate, as well as to reduce littering on New Mexico’s roadways, many of which are peppered with discarded alcohol containers.
Five years later, the mini prohibition has generated mixed results for its intended purpose, though other factors are also at play. Traffic deaths are down but DWI arrests are up, and littering remains a persistent problem some say has only gotten worse — with bigger bottles of booze now dotting the landscape.
While the ban on minis generated a lot of buzz at the time, it was just one provision of an extensive piece of legislation that in some respects made alcohol more available in New Mexico — from making some liquor licenses more affordable to allowing home delivery.
The bill, passed as restaurants and other businesses were reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, also included tax deductions and eliminated renewal fees for license holders until this year.
Minis are not entirely gone from New Mexico.
The ban applies only to off-site consumption, so minis are still available in hotel minibars, at golf courses and on airplanes. Liquor stores are also allowed to sell minis by the sleeve.
Some say the ban on minis only made people drink more.
“Now, with these 100 mils, people will just buy a double shot,” said Jerome Valdez, longtime general manager of Kokoman in Pojoaque.
“Do you want people to get more wasted?” he asked. “If you’re worried about people drinking on the road or whatever, well, now they’re worried about having an open container, so they’re going to do the whole two shots versus the one shot.”
Still, alcohol consumption nationwide has been trending downward, and New Mexico appears to be no exception. Liquor sales in the state dropped from nearly 19 million liters in 2022 to 18 million liters in 2025, according to data provided by the state Taxation and Revenue Department.
DWI arrests rise
Drunken-driving arrests in New Mexico have gone up since the ban went into effect, from 8,233 in 2020 to 9,465 in 2024, according to annual DWI reports produced by the University of New Mexico for the state Department of Transportation.
Officer Wilson Silver, a spokesperson for New Mexico State Police, said it would be premature for the agency to draw any conclusions about the impact of miniature bottles on DWI incidents. Police “encounter a wide variety of alcohol containers during DWI investigations” but do not track minis specifically, he wrote in an email.
“DWI’s are influenced by a number of factors, and our focus continues to be on proactive enforcement and holding impaired drivers accountable regardless of the source of alcohol,” he wrote.
State Sen. Linda Lopez, an Albuquerque Democrat who championed the ban on minis, said she believes it has helped alleviate the scourge of alcohol abuse in the state.
“Has it solved our DWI problem? No. No single measure will,” she said.
“But has it helped? I believe so,” Lopez said, noting traffic deaths have gone down every year since 2021.
“The liquor industry’s own lobbyists acknowledged at the time that mini bottle cleanup in store parking lots was a real problem,” she said. “That alone tells you something about how prevalent these bottles were in our communities.”
Discarded bottles of alcohol remain a problem, though there is one noticeable difference: The bottles tossed on the side of the road are now twice the size.
“Alcohol minis continue to be a huge litter problem for New Mexico,” Amy Whitfield, a special director at the state Department of Transportation, said in a statement. She added, litter cleanup initiatives like the state grant program Que Linda can help local governments address it.
A litter study conducted in 2025 found plastic bottles are one of the most visible types of litter, though it included bottles for water, sports drinks and other beverages.
While the state is seeing an increase in volunteers joining litter cleanups and participation in prevention education programs, they’re not seeing a reduction in discarded small bottles of alcohol, Whitfield said.
Lift for local spirits
While the ban on minis was the most tangible sign of the liquor reform law, the sweeping legislation included several other provisions. It permitted home delivery of alcohol with food orders as part of an effort to create a new revenue stream for businesses that had taken a financial hit during the coronavirus pandemic.
But perhaps the most significant provision allowed restaurateurs to purchase alcohol licenses at a much more affordable price than had been available in the past.
Making liquor licenses more accessible to new and existing business owners — $10,000 for a restaurant license to sell beer, wine and spirits — generated the most pushback when the Legislature was considering the bill.
License holders, some lawmakers and the New Mexico Restaurant Association raised concerns it would hurt existing owners, some of whom had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain their licenses. But others said it would give new and existing establishments a chance to get their foot in the door while also protecting owners of so-called legacy licenses.
Sen. Moe Maestas, D-Albuquerque, who sponsored the bill while serving as a member of the state House of Representatives, said he believes the law saved the restaurant industry.
“COVID decimated the restaurant industry in this state,” he said, adding the law allowed restaurants to be more competitive.
“You didn’t have to spend $300,000 buying a liquor license. You could get one for $10,000 a year. So, I think it kept the restaurant industry afloat,” Maestas said.
The so-called Restaurant B licenses have grown steadily since the law went into effect, from 62 in fiscal year 2022 to 152 in the current fiscal year.
The bill also allowed restaurants to pay $500 for a permit allowing establishments to sell liquor distilled in New Mexico. The number of such permits has increased from 69 the first year the law took effect to 114 now.
“That’s the most impactful thing this bill did, is it essentially created a market for local distilleries,” Maestas said.
Dire predictions the bill would hurt existing liquor license owners didn’t materialize, he said.
“They were told for 40 years that any amendment to the Liquor Control Act would destroy their business, destroy their retirement, kill their investment, and it was a lie,” Maestas said.
“They’re doing fantastic because if you own a bar, it’s in your interest for that bar to be in a thriving city,” he continued. “It’s not in your interest for that bar to be in a ghost town, and so by having more restaurants and more entertainment venues or whatnot selling beer, wine and spirits, it makes that town much more desirable.”
While the ban on minis wasn’t part of the original bill, Maestas said sponsors acquiesced.
“We didn’t want to kill the bill because of one amendment,” he said.
‘We lost money’
At the time, liquor store owners complained the last-minute amendment didn’t give them or the public an opportunity to comment. When the bill became law, it left them, in some cases, with tens of thousands of dollars in inventory they had to get rid of to be in compliance.
“Here, we only had three months to move all our product,” Valdez said. “I’m talking thousands of miniatures. Towards the end, we had some DeLeón Tequila, retail was going $20 or $25 a mini, and we ended up having to blow them out at like $2.50 a mini. We lost money because of this law.”
Valdez compared the ban on minis to the 1998 ban on drive-thru liquor sales, a measure aimed at reducing alcohol-related traffic deaths.
“What does it come down to?” he asked. “If people — if they’re going to drink, they’re going to drink.”
At Jake’s Liquor Store down the street, manager Johnny Castro echoed the sentiment, saying the ban on minis didn’t change anything.
“People are going to continue drinking, regardless of if it’s a smaller or bigger bottle,” he said.
