Politics
The Cannabis Beverage Industry Has An Evidence Problem, With Too Few Companies Submitting Products For Independent Scrutiny (Op-Ed)
“The industry cannot ask for nuanced, evidence-informed regulation while simultaneously declining to produce the evidence that would make that possible.”
By Leah Kollross, 23rd State
Cannabis beverages are one of the fastest-growing segments in the hemp and cannabis marketplace, and one of the most structurally vulnerable to regulatory backlash. The reason has less to do with the products themselves, and has everything to do with the fact that most operators in this space cannot prove their products do what they claim.
That’s not an indictment of any single brand. It’s a category-wide failure of accountability, and with federal hemp policy still unsettled and state-level frameworks actively being written, it’s a failure the industry can no longer afford to ignore.
The Problem Isn’t That The Products Don’t Work. It’s That We Can’t Prove They Do.
Look at any cannabis or hemp beverage brand’s marketing and you’ll find the same vocabulary: fast onset, consistent effects, a cleaner alternative to alcohol, harm reduction benefits, mood support. These are real attributes for well-formulated products. They are also almost universally unsubstantiated.
Industry estimates suggest fewer than 5 percent of cannabis beverage manufacturers invest in any form of independent product validation. The rest are operating on anecdotes, internal testing and consumer feedback loops that tell you what people want to hear, not necessarily what’s true.
This matters more than most operators realize. Retailers making shelf allocation decisions don’t have evidence to distinguish between products. Legislators drafting hemp THC regulations don’t have data to calibrate between well-formulated and poorly-made products. And consumers, particularly those who are new to the category, those reducing alcohol consumption or those managing chronic conditions, are making real decisions based on claims that no one has independently verified.
The regulatory risk here is direct: an industry that cannot produce evidence of its own performance invites blunt regulation built on the absence of data rather than the presence of it.
Real-World Research Is Starting To Close That Gap
Marijuana Moment covered the MoreBetter Real-World Infused Beverage Study when results from the first cohort became available, and the headline findings were significant: measurable reductions in daily alcohol use among participants, a strong majority reporting infused beverages felt safer for their health than alcohol and nearly half of participants trying an infused beverage for the first time. These are not trivial numbers for a category trying to make the case that it belongs in serious regulatory conversation.
But what the coverage of that study may have underemphasized is what the data looked like at the product level. Across more than 5,000 participants, 20 brands and multiple cohorts, the MoreBetter dataset has begun to reveal something that operators should find both clarifying and uncomfortable: not all THC beverages perform the same. Onset time, taste, duration and consistency vary measurably between products and, for the first time, there is a dataset large enough to document those differences rather than simply assert them.
For operators who have invested in formulation quality and bioavailability, this is good news. For operators who have relied on marketing claims without the science to back them up, it is a problem that is about to become much harder to ignore.
The Policy Argument For Participation
I serve on the National Cannabis Industry Association’s (NCIA) Human Resources Committee. I watch policy conversations develop in real time at both the state and federal level. And the consistent challenge facing hemp-derived beverage operators is that regulators are being asked to make decisions about a category for which meaningful independent evidence is scarce.
That is not a neutral condition. In the absence of industry-generated data, regulators default to precautionary frameworks, and precautionary frameworks applied to hemp THC products tend to look like the kind of blunt restrictions that treat a well-dosed, research-validated beverage the same as an unlabeled, unverified product manufactured with no quality controls. The industry cannot ask for nuanced, evidence-informed regulation while simultaneously declining to produce the evidence that would make that possible.
This is the argument I’ve been making to operators who are weighing whether to participate in research studies like MoreBetter’s: this is not primarily a marketing expense. It is an investment in the regulatory environment your business will operate in over the next five to ten years.
Every brand that participates in legitimate independent research contributes to a shared evidentiary base. Every brand that doesn’t is free-riding on the credibility built by the ones that do, all the while leaving the category’s overall data picture thinner than it needs to be.
What This Looks Like In Practice
At 23rd State, we enrolled our products in the MoreBetter study not just because we were certain the data would be flattering, but because we believed the category needed operators willing to subject their formulations to independent scrutiny. That’s what responsible product development looks like. It’s also what the cannabis beverage category will need to demonstrate systematically if it wants a durable seat at the regulatory table.
The brands that will define this category long-term are not necessarily the ones with the best branding or the largest distribution footprints. They are the ones that can demonstrate their products perform consistently, and in ways that are measurable and independently verified. That standard is achievable. It requires investment, transparency and a willingness to let the data tell the story rather than the marketing copy.
The window to build that foundation before regulatory frameworks harden is open. It will not stay open indefinitely.
Leah Kollross is the founder of 23rd State, a Minnesota-based cannabis beverage brand, and a member of the National Cannabis Industry Association’s Human Resources Committee.
