Facts
THC drinks, by the numbers
Almost everything written about this category cites an industry report. This page cites itself. Every figure below is computed from the 150 products in this database at the moment the page was built, each one read off the brand's own page by hand, so the numbers move when the market does and there is nothing here for anyone to forget to update.
The market is not spread out. It is stacked on two numbers.
| Tier | Range | Drinks | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microdose | up to 2.5mg | 6 | 4% |
| Social | over 2.5, up to 5mg | 73 | 50% |
| Standard | over 5, up to 10mg | 62 | 42% |
| Heavy | over 10mg | 5 | 3% |
The shape is the story. This is not a category with a smooth range of strengths, the way beer runs from 3% to 12%. It is a category with a couple of standard doses and a long, thin tail.
| Dose | Drinks | Share of those that publish one |
|---|---|---|
| 5mg | 70 | 48% |
| 10mg | 61 | 42% |
| 2mg | 4 | 3% |
| 50mg | 3 | 2% |
| 2.5mg | 2 | 1% |
Two consequences follow, and both matter more than they sound.
The first is that switching brands is usually not switching strength. If you liked a 5mg drink, most of the shelf is also 5mg, and the thing that will actually differ is flavour, sweetness and how fast it comes on.
The second is that the tail is where people get caught. The strongest single serving in this database is 50mg, which is several times the most common dose, and it sits on the same shelf in a similar can. The number on the front is the only thing distinguishing them.
A serving is not a container
21 of the 150 products here hold more than one serving. That sounds like a technicality and it is the single most dangerous detail in the category.
A 750mL bottle marketed as "250mg" is not a 250mg drink. It is twenty-five 10mg pours. A can marked "10mg" that says "2 servings" in small type on the back is a 5mg drink unless you finish it, and plenty of people finish it. This is why every sort, filter and tier on this site runs on the per-serving figure and never the container total, and why a product that publishes only a container total is shown with its per-serving dose blank rather than filled in by division.
There is a worked example of a brand contradicting itself about this on the Judge's Stash page: the headline says 250mg, the nutrition panel says 240mg, and twenty-five shots at the stated 10mg comes to 250. We record the per-serving figure, which is stated three times and never varies, and leave the total blank.
What the category does not tell you
| Spec | Publish it | Do not |
|---|---|---|
| A per-serving THC figure | 146 (97%) | 4 |
| A calorie count | 77 (51%) | 73 |
| A sugar figure | 74 (49%) | 76 |
| A CBD figure | 50 (33%) | 100 |
| The container volume | 108 (72%) | 42 |
That table is the reason this site exists. A drink is a food product, and a food product that does not publish a calorie count is unusual. Here it is routine.
Note especially the CBD row. A great many cans mention CBD somewhere on the label or the marketing copy without ever stating how much, which is discussed on THC and CBD.
None of the blanks above are estimated. When a brand does not publish a figure, this site prints "not listed" rather than borrowing one from a similar product, and How we source explains why that rule has no exceptions.
What this database is not
It is not every THC drink in America. It is 150 products we could read specs for on the brand's own website, which skews toward brands with a real web presence and away from taproom-only and regional producers. Several brands were researched and left out entirely because their own product pages had gone offline, and a couple were left out because the only figures available were lab batch assays rather than the dose the brand declares.
That is a real limitation and it is worth stating plainly, because a database that quietly presented itself as complete would be making exactly the kind of claim this site refuses to make about a milligram.