THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT COMES TO CNN: CNN Plans to Sober Up Boozy New Year’s Eve Coverage.

As 2022 goes out, so too will a recent holiday tradition: During CNN’s broadcast of various New Year’s Eve celebrations, Don Lemon probably won’t be downing shots on camera.

The Warner Bros. Discovery-backed news outlet wants to pare back some of the zany antics that have become a staple of its wee-hours coverage of the last night of the year. While Anderson Cooper will still be able to imbibe during primetime hours — along with his co-host Andy Cohen — while the duo holds forth in Times Square, correspondents and anchors who may have slurped down alcoholic concoctions on camera (or off) in the past will be required to halt the practice.

The network’s coverage of New Year’s Eve was a topic of a town-hall discussion held Tuesday between CNN staffers and Chris Licht, the company’s chairman and CEO, according to people familiar with the meeting. The coming New Year’s Eve broadcast will be CNN’s first under Licht’s aegis.  During the event, Licht told employees he felt on-camera drinking eroded the credibility of CNN personnel and damaged the “respectability” they may enjoy among viewers. CNN declined to make executives available for comment.

Flashback to the beginning of 2017:

● ‘Don’t get blood on the jacket!’ ‘Drunk Don Lemon’ gets his ear pierced live on air during NYE show.

● Bitter Lemon? CNN anchor Don Lemon has his microphone cut as he starts to talk about how 2016 was ‘awful’ after drinking tequila in live New Year broadcast.

● Kathy Griffin cuts cameraman’s beard, wraps Anderson Cooper in tinfoil on CNN New Year’s Eve.

As I wrote at the time, “On the plus side, at least Griffin and Cooper weren’t the most embarrassing members of CNN’s annual new year’s eve train wreck for a change, but I feel for those held hostage in airport departure lounges forced to watch this debacle.”