Just this year, outside players and big names like Jones Soda Company and Pabst Blue Ribbon have entered the cannabis game with their own lines of infused beverages. Cannabis beverages have offered their own array of benefits, including a faster metabolization process than many ingestible, food edibles, meaning that the cannabis effects typically hit the user much quicker.
There are already plenty of 10mg, single-serving options in the THC beverage world. However, companies like Rob Dyrdek and Diplo’s Leisuretown line have swooped in with low-dose options. Leisuretown beverages each have 2.5mg of THC and 5mg of CBD, made explicitly for folks looking to wind down throughout an entire evening without overindulging, emulating the experience of a night out with a few alcoholic drinks.
It’s a playground of sorts at this stage, a time for experimentation and innovation as these products still remain in a period of infancy compared to their ingestible counterparts, flower and concentrates.
And currently, cannabis beverages only represent about 1% of overall legal cannabis sales in the U.S. Though, that’s not to say the cogs aren’t moving—CNBC reports that the market is already getting crowded, with various companies like Leisuretown, Jones, and Pabst attempting to crack the code to create the first successful, mainstream THC beverage.
“The choice for consumers was not as wide in the past but now we’ve seen dozens of companies get involved in the cannabis beverage space,” said Amanda Reiman,vice president of public policy research at New Frontier Data, a cannabis firm tracking consumer habits.
Many companies continue to follow the 10mg model, the standard state-recommended single serving of edibles, for each drink. Other companies better known for their alcoholic offerings, like Anheuser-Busch, the