Cannabis will either be ‘symbiotic’ or ‘detrimental’ in the drinks industry

Legalised cannabis could be ‘detrimental’ to drinks companies that don’t adapt to its presence in the consumer market, according to a new report on the potential scope of a global marijuana industry.

According to the report, the drinks industry is the “most embedded” out of any consumer goods sector. A number of US drinks firms, including Constellation Brands, have already invested in cannabis startups and begun to develop products infused with the drug. UK-based Diageo has also been in talks with three different Cannadian cannabis producers with a view to developing its own line of CBD-infused drinks, while Californian brewer Lagunitas, owned by Heineken, launched its own THC-laced, alcoholic “beer” last summer.

If cannabis became legal worldwide, it would reshape “millennia-old drinking rituals and providing an alternative to social lubrication occasions,” said Spiros Malandrakis, drinks analyst at Euromonitor.

“Cannabis should be either embraced as a symbiotic opportunity or faced as a potentially detrimental antagonist for an alcohol industry already on the defensive,” he said.

The report, which also estimated that the global cannabis industry’s value will grow from USD$12 billion in 2018 to $166 billion in 2025 as more states and countries relax their own laws around the drug, claimed that, as alcohol consumption continues to fall steadily worldwide and the demand for low/no ABV products increases, cannabis producers will carve their own gap in the market.

“Drinks that contain any form of THC [the psychoactive compound found in cannabis] currently tend not to contain alcohol,” it said, as the effects of THC in alcohol are still being researched.”

“The industry is already headed in a low- / non-alcohol direction and so a future where THC replaces ABV in alcoholic beverages with an intoxicating buzz is on the horizon.”