Last summer, the city shut down my neighborhood’s illegal smoke shop. It was high time, officials said: Spots like these peddled unsafe products, like suspiciously potent sour-mango gummy strips with 500 milligrams of THC, a tiny chunk of which left me with visions of icebergs as I stood at the sink washing the greasy munchies residue off my hands. Afterwards, the shop was reduced to selling a few psychedelic T-shirts and bongs. With the nearest licensed dispensary a few subway stops away, I wandered over to the next-best place for a convenient high: the grocery store, which now stocked sativa, indica, and hybrid-blend 10-mg. THC drinks between the green kombuchas and canned oat-milk lattes.
Soon, I was a weed-drink convert. The highs were surprisingly strong but also mellower, shorter, and less unpredictable than that of an edible; I could sip one, giggle at nothing for an hour, then go about my day. After years of sober curiosity and endless nonalcoholic alternatives, I finally found something that helped me cut back on booze.
There’s never been a better time to do it. Even as dabblings with moderation spin out into a wider cultural reckoning with drinking, with over a third of Americans saying they’re completely abstaining from booze, the rate of alcohol-related deaths is rising faster among women than men. In January, Dr. Vivek Murthy closed out his tenure as surgeon general with a warning about alcohol’s link to cancer; turns out not even moderate drinking is without risk. But for those of us who still want to lose our inhibitions at 5 p.m., there’s no shortage of weed beverages waiting in the NA wings, marketing themselves as a version of drinking that’s all buzz and no downsides. “F*ck hangovers and texts to your ex,” advertises Cann, a pastel-colored “social tonic” company that likens the effects of its 5-mg. THC lemon-lavender “Hi Boy” cocktail to a “martini or a double IPA.” Uncle Arnie’s 10-mg. iced-tea lemonade offers you the “euphoria of a night out without the alcohol-induced lows,” and Long Coast’s “Delta 9 Cocktails” come in margarita, mimosa, and mojito flavors inspired by the “bold, rugged” Maine coastline. For Diet Coke fans, Cantrip has a 10-mg. Diet Cola with “0 sugar, 0 calories,” and Nowadays, popular on TikTok — where users coyly refer to “gardening” to get around the app’s strict ban on cannabis content — sells hard-liquor-like bottles ranging from 33 to 166 milligrams of THC so you can microdose your way into the “The Future of Drinking.”
At the very least, we’re microdosing ourselves into the cannabis industry’s wide and welcoming pockets. The global THC-beverage market, which was valued at $345 million in 2023, is expected to reach $2 billion by 2030. As alcohol sales decline, big-box retailers are looking to weed drinks as a promising new revenue stream. And women, who statistically do the bulk of shopping at grocery stores where these products are strategically placed, have also started to consume more cannabis than men. Turns out I’m not the only woman tossing my THC into a grocery cart with English muffins and a bottle of Sriracha. But am I fooling myself by believing that it’s any healthier than a six pack?
Weed drinks only started popping up on shelves a few years ago, after the 2018 Farm Bill removed hemp — which is categorized as less than 0.3 percent THC on a dry-weight basis, and found in every weed beverage — from the legal definition of marijuana. That reinvention, from illicit drug to a substance as innocuous as the CBD oil you rub on your joints, opened the doors to a murky new marketplace. “If you’re a hemp beverage with less than 0.3 percent of THC by volume, you’re technically allowed to sell in stores and don’t have to be in a dispensary,” says Dr. Tory Spindle, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies the ways drugs like cannabis alter human behavior. While marijuana is obviously not legal in every state, seltzers are a “quirk of legislation” that’s resulted in a gray area, he says. Even in South Carolina, where first-time marijuana possession can carry a jail sentence, 5-mg. cans line the shelves of local Piggly Wigglys.
Hemp’s low THC percentage doesn’t mean it can’t get you extremely stoned. A weed drink you buy somewhere other than a dispensary, like a grocery or convenience store, can technically have less than 0.3 percent THC by volume and still contain 5, 50, or even 100 milligrams of THC. The highest potency I’ve seen at my grocery store is 10 milligrams, but I’ve seen five times that at a liquor store. Cycling Frog’s popular 50-mg. lemonade teas retail at $30 for a four-pack, and Keef, the best-selling THC-drink brand of 2023, sells a Cola Xtreme that has 100 mg a can. As recreational weed becomes more potent than ever — the Yale School of Medicine reports that a “staggering array” of readily available products, like dabs, oils, and edibles, contain as high as 90 percent THC, as opposed to the measly 4 percent in products seized by authorities in the ’90s — companies producing hemp-derived drinks are following suit. “Cannabis companies have a built-in financial incentive to increase potency,” says Dr. Ellicott Matthay, an assistant professor of population health at NYU Langone. “It’s a market-driven phenomenon, not only for cannabis but for all types of substances. Making them more potent, frankly, makes them more addictive.”
Weed drinks sold in dispensaries contain delta-9, the most potent and common form of THC, while the ones you find at grocery and convenience stores can also contain hemp-derived, synthetic cannabinoids like delta-8 and THC-A, “some of which we know more about, some of which we know less about,” says Matthay. (Delta-8, for instance, is a weaker strain than delta-9 but is still psychoactive.) It’s not entirely clear how the drinks compare to other forms of THC. At Johns Hopkins, Spindle is studying the effects of three different types of THC vehicles containing the same concentration — brownies, which are high-fat vehicles; gummies, which are low-fat; and drinks. So far, preliminary results suggest the drinks hit faster than the rest, which would make sense, given that we metabolize what we drink faster than what we eat. “There isn’t enough research into the topic to really understand how different THC-edible formulations are metabolized,” Spindle says.
As far as we know, risks of THC drinks are about the same as basically any other cannabis product: intoxication, psychoactive effects, and dependence if you consume them too frequently. But that means some of the long-term risks can include cannabis-use disorder and “lasting changes in brain development” for younger users, not to mention straight-up episodes of psychosis, says Dr. Timothy Brennan, clinical director at Mount Sinai’s Addiction Institute. “The earlier we use cannabis, the more altered our brains are later in life,” he says. “There’s pretty clearly documented cognitive blunting, cognitive impairment, and the increased risk of developing a chronic psychotic disorder like schizophrenia.”
And when you compare weed seltzers to alcohol, says Matthay, “you’re not guaranteed to be getting an option that’s better for your health. It’s just a different and more unknown risk profile.” Weed-drink labels aren’t always transparent about what strains of THC they contain, and experts note that quality control isn’t standardized or strict. That lack of clarity from a manufacturer can be particularly concerning when you’re drinking higher-potency cans, like the ones with 50 milligrams. “If you go out and buy an alcoholic beverage, it’ll give you the ABV on the bottle by law, and that’s very likely to be accurate,” Brennan says. “But when it comes to cannabis, what they say can be nuanced — it can be delta-8, -9, or -10; we don’t know. It’s scary for a consumer that goes out thinking they’re getting a light buzz and end up vomiting on the floor.”
Unlike with a stiff cocktail, there’s no way of tasting the amount of weed in a THC beverage, so it’s easy to overdo it. One 33-year-old New Yorker who works in finance and now “barely drinks” alcohol after discovering weed drinks told me she once ended up downing half a bottle of Nowadays, more than 40 milligrams of THC, and woke up high the next day: “I wasn’t thinking about it, and before I knew it, I was beyond high.” Tony, a 38-year-old New Jersey man who is alcohol sober (and who, like others in this story, asked to use a pseudonym), used to drink up to four seltzers a week with giant bags of Taco Bell, but dialed it back after some cans left him hazy and uncomfortable. “I assumed they were pretty much the same, and it only recently occurred to me that no one is keeping all that close an eye on these things,” says Tony, who sticks to low-dose drinks and steers clear of the 50-mg. Cycling Frog iced-tea lemonades that have sat on the shelves of his local liquor store for months; even the proprietor is afraid of them.
Art Massolo, who leads business development at Cycling Frog, says the company’s 50-mg. cans sell out on its site the minute they’re restocked. But even at hemp companies, the higher potencies are contentious. Inexperienced users should treat the drinks the way they would a high-proof spirit, Massolo says, and he doesn’t think they should be widely accessible. “My personal belief is those drinks should be sold in venues that are catering to people who are used to imbibing,” Massolo says, adding that the hemp industry is “begging to be regulated.”
Because state regulations around cannabis apply only to products containing delta-9 THC, products made from hemp and synthetic cannabinoids remain largely unregulated. The drinks have defied restrictions and emergency regulations attempting to ban or curtail their sale in states including New York, Connecticut, and California. In New Jersey, lawmakers fretting about kids potentially getting their hands on high levels of untested delta-8 spurred the state’s governor to sign a bill into law that would halt the sale and production of the drinks until the state’s cannabis regulatory commission established rules for hemp products. Liquor and corner stores scrambled to sell the last of their weed-drink inventory. But in the end, the state’s commission issued a vague statement saying it was unable to begin enforcement and emphasized that weed drinks are prohibited to anyone under 21. The cans stayed put, where they’ll remain for the foreseeable future, especially as new drinks pop out of the woodwork faster than regulatory agencies, which vary from state to state, can keep up.
I still peruse my local liquor store’s NA section from time to time — even the acronym makes me feel somehow clean — to pick up yet another new low-dose THC blueberry mojito or passionfruit-fizz seltzer. It’s just an occasional vice, and I tell myself it’s a healthier choice than getting the bottle of wine that I occasionally still crave. Back home, I arrange my snacks on the coffee table and crack my can open. I pat myself on the back for not drinking alcohol, then gulp down my mysterious cannabinoids instead. First comes the mild anxiety that the bubbles are slowly blunting my cognitive abilities. Then comes the high, sweet and ebullient. I forget the anxiety. I fall asleep.
But for some, a drug is still a drug whether or not you package it like a LaCroix. A few months ago, while 29-year-old Adrienne was at work in Manhattan, her mother, who is in her 60s, was visiting her apartment in Jersey City. Adrienne considers herself something of a weed-drink connoisseur, the kind who brings them to get-togethers with her friends instead of drinking Champagne. Her mom, not so much. She texted Adrienne that she found something to drink in her fridge. Adrienne didn’t think anything of it, but two days later, she found a 10-mg. Uncle Arnie’s iced tea in her trash, “hippie dippy” label and all. “I was like, Who drank this?” She called her mother, who never even realized she’d gotten high. “I was wondering why I was feeling so weird. I felt so tired my brain couldn’t pack to go back home,” she told Adrienne. For a fleeting window, her mother was pro–weed drink, and she even asked Adrienne to bring some over during the holidays. A few days later, she changed her mind: “Who would want to feel that way? Who would want to be tired? Cannabis is a gateway drug,” she told Adrienne. “But she enjoyed it for 48 hours.”