Arizona State Drink: Lemonade

Arizona's identity has long been organized around what locals call the 5 C's: cattle, cotton, copper, climate, and citrus. The framework dates to an era when schoolchildren memorized the pillars of the Arizona economy. Four of them already had representation among the state's official symbols. Citrus did not.

That gap was the argument. Arizona grows a significant share of U.S. citrus — particularly lemons — in the warm irrigated farmland around Yuma and the Phoenix Basin. The state has a real agricultural stake in the crop, but no symbol acknowledged it. Lemonade, made from lemons, bridged the distance between an abstract framework and something concrete enough to put in statute.

House Bill 2692 passed the Arizona Legislature in 2019 and was signed by Governor Doug Ducey in May of that year (record). The passage was not contentious — the dispute during hearings ran more to which drink to choose than whether to choose one at all. Tea, pink lemonade, margarita, tequila, and jamaica all came up before lemonade emerged as the consensus pick. The final vote was not close.

Garrett Glover was a student from Gilbert when he spotted the gap and took it directly to state legislators — not through a teacher's petition or a school project submission, but in person. HB 2692 moved through committee, passed both chambers, and reached the governor. A student observation about an incomplete list ended as a signed state law.

The legislative debate surfaced several competing nominations. Tea was an early contender — widely consumed, heat-appropriate, and broadly popular. Pink lemonade came up as a variation on what ultimately won. The margarita and tequila were floated, each with its own regional logic, though the alcoholic options faced resistance in committee. Jamaica — the hibiscus-flower iced tea common in Mexican-American communities across the Southwest — also drew support from members who pointed to its cultural weight in Arizona.

None of them resolved the 5 C's problem as directly as lemonade did.