In June 2023, Jon Halper started selling THC beverages at Top Ten Liquors, his chain of Minnesota stores. The drinks, which contain the main intoxicating chemical compound found in cannabis, were a massive hit.
“Immediately, the sales took off,” said Halper. “We’ve never seen anything explosive like this.”
After just two years, THC beverages make up about 15% of overall sales, he said. “It’s hard to believe this growth isn’t going to be astronomical.”
The time is right for a THC beverage boom. Many Americans are embracing a California sober lifestyle — drinking less alcohol, which they see as harmful to health, and trying out marijuana instead. A study published in 2024 found that a higher number of Americans reported using cannabis every day than drinking alcohol daily.
And thanks to what many consider to be a loophole in the 2018 farm bill, THC beverage makers have been able to rapidly launch their products across the country with little oversight. Now, states are trying to make sense of the bill’s language, setting up their own regulations and raising questions for the future of the fast-growing industry.
A category that came out of nowhere
For years, beverage companies toyed with the idea of using THC in drinks. But cannabis is a tricky business. Marijuana is a “schedule I controlled substance” in the United States, meaning companies that sell marijuana products legally don’t get certain tax benefits. The classification also makes it hard for those firms to get funding from financial institutions wary of breaking federal laws.
So drink makers avoided cannabis. Then the 2018 farm bill changed the game.
The lengthy document governs a wide range of agricultural and food assistance programs, and it includes a few pages that legalized the production of hemp, defined as a cannabis plant that has no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC on a dry-weight basis (cannabis plants with higher concentrations of THC are classified as marijuana). That language spawned a fast-growing market of technically legal THC beverages that are still potent enough to make you feel something.
At the time, “these drinks did not exist,” said Frank Colombo, managing director of Viridian Capital Advisors, which specializes in cannabis. “Nobody anticipated this whole category of hemp-based intoxicants, let alone hemp-based THC drinks.”
In 2020, the US market for hemp-derived THC drinks amounted to about $400,000, according to Brightfield Group, a consumer insights and market research firm that has been tracking the THC drink industry. By 2024, the market had grown significantly, reaching $382 million dollars. This year, it will grow to $571 million, Brightfield predicts, with more expansion to come.
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