“Demographics is destiny” is a quote that is attributed to the French philosopher August Comte, the father of sociology. The general idea behind this quote is that by studying the demographics you can glimpse what the future will be.
Aaron Grey from Alliance Global Partners released a report on April 7th that is basically a stunning visual tour-de-force of how cannabis is taking over with younger people and showing that younger generations are simply going straight to cannabis and bypassing alcohol. I’ve written before and I will say it again, cannabis is the Great Replacement, not a gateway drug.
AGP estimates that half of all alcohol consumers will also be consuming cannabis by 2033. This is important because what Wall Street, many investors and alcohol company executives do not fully appreciate is that when people add THC consumption alongside alcohol, they reduce overall consumption of alcohol. When you get high on THC, you normally don’t want to get higher, but alcohol functions differently in the moment, encouraging you to drink more and more and suffer later. So, whether people replace alcohol with cannabis or people supplement alcohol with THC, alcohol consumption falls.
Here is a snippet of the excellent report with graphs.
AGP’s main point is that Big Alcohol is going to need to participate in cannabis or it is going to lose customers. And its not just alcohol, but Big Tobacco as well. The younger generation is skipping nicotine and going straight to cannabis. See below:
Now we have two very large industries, tobacco and alcohol, that very clearly can see what is happening and what is going to continue to happen as younger generations choose cannabis. They will need to participate in cannabis.
So, if it is this obvious, what is stopping those industries from entering the space? The answer is that they tried too early with a bunch of poorly run Canadian companies and incinerated billions of dollars.
The other reason they have held off is the bizarre structure of state legality and Federal illegality in the US. But hemp and specifically hemp beverages don’t have that problem. Low dose hemp beverages as I have written about before are Federally legal and can ship across state lines.
And with that in mind, I want to share one more chart, which is of google searches for THC drinks.
And it’s not just Google, but also Good Morning America. This segment on GMA profiled a woman who said she was a better mom because of low dose hemp beverages.
The pace of change to cannabis is accelerating and it is being led by hemp beverages. Cannabis is continuing to devour market share, and the demographics tell us that there has never been a better time to be bullish on the future of cannabis and especially cannabis beverages. As the excellent AGP report shows us, it shouldn’t be long until Big Alcohol jumps into the hemp beverage pool because that’s where their customers are headed.