Is This Bizarre Ice Cream Law In Georgia Actually Real?

Ah, Djaaaaw-dja (Georgia, that is): Land of peaches, peanuts, pecans and their pie, sweet tea drunk on slowly swayin' summertime porch swings, Atlanta trap music that might make us take back the rest of our compliments, and some of the most stifling heat this side of the Mason-Dixon Line. If you're in Georgia in the summer, grab some ice cream to cool down. Just don't stuff it in your back pocket. Like, the cone. On Sunday, no less. Sometimes in Savannah. Or at least that's what loads of sites online say.

Yes, numerous articles cite Georgia's ultra-bizarre "no ice cream cones in your back pocket" legislation (one of the many weird laws in the state). There's Stupid Laws, Kicks 99, and Noelle Neff even goes so far as to cite Fox News as the source of this story. But the Fox article in question says absolutely nothing about ice cream of any type and cites a completely different strange Georgian law. Only in Your State even has a story attached to the no-pocket ice cream law, saying that it came into being because horse thieves would stick an ice cream cone (not a carrot) in their back pocket to lure the animals away.

If this already doesn't sound like the dumbest thing you've ever heard, then we'll be the ones to inform you: You've been had. There's currently no such law anywhere in any Georgian legal code, state-wide, Fulton County-wide, Savannah-wide, or in any other city or region. We're not quite sure why so many sites have trouble with simple internet searches or with blindly repeating misinformation, but hey: Welcome to 2025.

So no, Georgia has no law prohibiting you from sticking an ice cream in your pocket. If you want to go ahead and ruin your ice cream along with your jeans or shorts (and waste your money in the process), then by all means go right ahead. And no luring away horses with that sneaky cone, mister! It's a totally foolproof plan that no one would ever notice. Why isn't there a law against these kinds of things?

Anyway, we've got no idea where the "no ice cream cone in the back pocket" story came from, only that it's circulated long enough for folks to parrot it reflexively. It even gets cited in a photographic journal of each U.S. state's stupidest law, "I Fought the Law," from 2017, though it's attributed to Alabama. According to Mashable, the legislation comes from Georgia and Kentucky, while ABC7 says New York had a similar law. None of these claims appear to have been confirmed with any actual evidence, so even if Georgia did have such a law at one point, it's unverified as of this writing.

Even though Georgia doesn't have a "no ice cream cone in the back pocket" law, it does have loads of laws related to dairy product sanitation. The Official Code of Georgia Annotated (OCGA), Title 26, Chapter 2, Article 7 contains 20 individual laws related to how milk and dairy products are processed, handled, transported, stored, and graded. Remember we mentioned Georgian summertime heat? Well, most of these laws date from 1929 to 1933, with some as old as 1906. It stands to reason that folks might have been getting sick from bad dairy products in an era of less advanced refrigeration and quality control. The Georgian government likely clamped down on dairy industry practices to preserve public health.

The weirdest of these OCGA laws is weird only because of its antiquated wording.  OCGA § 26-2-240 declares that no ice cream in Georgia may be "adulterated." This doesn't mean having an affair with it, e.g., engaging in adultery. Although, your level of intimacy when it comes to ice cream — coned, cupped, or otherwise — is your own business. Rather, Georgian ice cream is adulterated (ruined, defiled, debased, etc.) if it "contains any preservative, mineral, or other substance or compound deleterious to health," "any fats other than milk fat or any oils or paraffin" besides cocoa butter, or if it's generally, "unfit for consumption as food." Note that this law refers to ice cream sellers, not customers, which means that customers can adulterate the cream to their heart's content. You can even put it in your back pocket.