THC beverages are extraordinary shapeshifters.
Excluding plain water, there’s no other drink that enjoys such a breadth of uses. People consume them alone at home to unwind after work. Others bring them to parties in place of a six-pack of beer. Still others will drink one before a long run or a Pilates class. And some people swear THC beverages help them lock in on mundane tasks like vacuuming their house, walking the dog, or raking leaves.
If and when it’s available for sale, these drinks can be social lubricant or solo optimizer, wine replacement or functional energy drink. If there’s a mood you’re trying to achieve, guaranteed there’s a THC beverage brand marketing itself as the solution.
To be both medicine and vice is a remarkable duality. Some THC beverage brands like Uncle Arnie’s and Cheech & Chong’s High & Dry embrace classic stoner tropes: splashes of tie-dye, cans with peace signs, the promise of “getting high.” They feel indulgent, escapist, beer-adjacent. Others, like BRĒZ and BLNCD, lean hard in the other direction, designed to be more at home at a juice bar than a frat house: sleek and minimal labels, mellow colors, repeated use of the word zen. If not purely medicinal, they’re certainly wellness-aligned, something you’d drink to soothe anxiety before bed or to reduce irritability when you’re on your period.
Can a beverage really be both? It’s a critical question for a category still in its infancy.
Public awareness, let alone understanding, of THC drinks is low. Laws vary state to state, and these products are still illegal at the federal level—many Americans are confused about the legality of intoxicating beverages made from hemp and cannabis.
Even Minnesota, the first state to legalize the sale of hemp-derived THC, has yet to reach a majority of consumers. Per Top Ten Liquors, the state’s largest retailer of hemp-derived drinks, fewer than 20% of shoppers purchase one. THC drinks are very much in the process of introducing themselves to the public, and brands are doing so from varied, even conflicting, angles. Some are low-dose, cut-loose party fuel akin to a beer or glass of wine. Others are high-dose, quasi-pharmaceutical relief designed to ameliorate pain and glue your back to the couch. The friction can be bewildering.
Ellen Wilcox heard this time and again in interviews with THC customers. She leads research and insights for Listen Co., a venture capital firm focused on early-stage consumer brands. This spring, she spearheaded the company’s reporting on people’s motivations for using THC drinks, which revealed “deep, deep tension.” Despite being sold in grocery stores and promoted by the likes of Whoopi Goldberg, Seth Rogen, and other celebs, THC drinks do still carry a stigma in some circles.
“In one breath, people were telling me how absolutely transformative these drinks are and how healthy they believe they are, but in the next were saying, ‘Well, I’ll share them with my close group of friends, but I’m still not going to be walking around in public with one,’” Wilcox says.
A quarter of respondents to Listen’s survey said “prioritizing their health” was among the top three reasons people choose THC beverages. Yet much of society still views this category as, well, drugs. Retail availability likely contributes to this: In states where hemp-derived THC is available, these drinks are mostly sold in bodegas, liquor stores, and gas stations, not pharmacies or vitamin shops. As these drinks hit more mainstream shelves, though, that perception could change.
Destiny Muñoz-Semple, a marketer for cross-functional beverages, says that the more people understand about these drinks, the more they’ll come to view them with nuance. Right now, consumers’ diverging views come down to whether people view these drinks as “escapism” or “presence,” that is, to turn their brains off or on.
Muñoz-Semple has seen the diversity that exists within THC drinks and believes there’s room under the tent for all of them. “Replacing your nightly wine with a microdose, there are brands for that,” she says. “But there are also brands for getting stoned.” Depending on their goal, drinkers will choose different brands, dosages, and even cannabinoids or functional ingredients. Some drinks contain CBD to help the body relax, for example, while others contain lion’s mane mushrooms to improve focus. Ideally, a THC drink has ingredients, branding, and marketing that all tell the drinker exactly how it will make them feel.
When she works with THC companies, Muñoz-Semple asks them to get specific about the type of experience they’re offering consumers. “What do you want someone to feel? What moments are you trying to own? When is someone reaching for this?”
These are questions that every type of beverage—from coffee to alcohol to sports drinks—has answered. THC drinks will get there, too, in time. And the answer may not be monolithic; after all, consumers order a bottle of Perrier-Jouët for different occasions than they would a Miller Lite. The THC category is so new and dynamic that the industry is still learning how people are using these drinks. It might come as a surprise that of the six main THC drink occasions that Listen Co. identified, just two were social settings. Despite how often these beverages market themselves as social, the rest were solo situations, like relieving pain or unwinding at home.
Lars Miller has created content, photography, and podcasts for cannabis and consumer-packaged goods companies for years, and he thinks versatility is baked into THC drinks. He foresees a future when THC is mostly used for wellness reasons, but not at the complete exclusion of indulgent occasions.
With a range of brands, dosages, flavors, and ingredients at their fingertips, people can use these beverages to achieve whatever experience they’re looking for—be it tame or trippy. It has distant echoes in the way alcohol was once marketed and sold (and, during Prohibition, prescribed by doctors) as medicine, or the way that psilocybin has both therapeutic and recreational properties.
“At the end of the day, even if the main use is medicinal, if something is fun, people are going to use it in a fun way,” Miller says.