Share of buzz

Column - Robert Joseph 

Robert Joseph
Robert Joseph

Committing predictions to paper is always foolhardy, but I’m going to make two: one of which I’m offering with confidence, while the other is more speculative. First, I am quite certain that, in the next few years, a growing number of people will become consumers of both wine and cannabis. My rationale is simple. Until recently, most of the world’s would-be wine drinkers have had little difficulty obtaining alcohol, provided they are old enough and don’t live in a country that takes a hard line against alcohol on religious grounds. Cannabis fans, by contrast, have had to visit specific cafes (in Holland), feign illness (in many parts of the US) or, more likely, deal with a vendor they’re unlikely to want to spend time with socially.

That picture is changing. Cannabis has been effectively decriminalised in Portugal, Spain and Switzerland. Justin Trudeau, the new premier of Canada, has said he will remove restrictions in Canada, while across the border, cannabis is already legal for ‘therapeutic’ use in 25 states, and for ‘recreational’ purposes in four others, plus Washington DC. Allowing ‘medical’ use of the drug in California has reportedly led to around one in every 50 or so over-21-year-olds – the age group permitted to consume alcohol – having a licence to access it. Within five to seven years, most of North America may treat pot as casually as Pinot Grigio.

In most places where the rules have already been loosened, the aim has been to remove the threat of prison for people who grow a handful or so of plants for their own consumption. This has created a cottage industry of ‘potrepreneurs’, few of whom are getting rich. But, in the US, despite the fact that sale, possession and use of cannabis are still federal crimes and banks are loathe to associate themselves with the industry, there are events like the National Marijuana Business Conference in Las Vegas, and a growing number of ambitious commercial brands. 

In Colorado, the industry is worth an estimated $2bn per year and the $88m sales and excise taxes the state banked in 2015 exceeded its revenues from alcohol. In Illinois, where cannabis is still only legal for therapeutic use, a company named Revolution Enterprises has recently built $20m worth of cultivation and laboratory facilities. Cannabis is big business.

It is also multipolar. It’s both legal and illegal; a medically prescribed treatment and relaxing alternative to a dry Martini; and it comes in a number of different forms. It is no longer simply a substance to smoke or bake into cookies; today’s users are just as likely to apply it as a cream or to pour it into a glass.

Cannabis drinks that are already on the market range from the brand-leading Canna Cola, and Mirth Provisions’ Legal – a range of cherry, lemon ginger, and pomegranate- flavoured tonic drinks containing 20 mg of THC (the mind-altering substance) and costing $10.00 to $15.00 – to Catapult coffee pods that will radically change your morning espresso. There’s also Subtle Tea, that combines just 4 mg of THC with green tea. 

Apart from Canna Cola, the biggest cannabis brands include Marley Natural, launched by the family of the reggae singer Bob Marley, and Dixie Elixirs, that come in 30 different forms ranging from mints and chewing gum to iced tea. But of greatest interest to readers of this column is a product called No Label, a cannabis-infused ‘wine tincture’ launched by the Grammy-award-winning singer, Melissa Etheridge. 

It was this last product that Dixie’s CEO, Tripp Keber, talked about at the 2015 BevNET conference in New York. Once the issues of legality have been settled, he predicted, big businesses such as Diageo will want to buy these kinds of brands. “[Big Alcohol companies] are not interested in giving up market share. And so if you can’t beat them, join them,” he says. “And when I say join them, I mean buy us.”

Which brings me to my second, less certain prediction: by the time President Clinton or Trump is seeing reelection for a second term, cannabis, spirits, beers and wines will be produced and sold by the same companies. Coca Cola once created the term ‘share of throat’ to describe its aim of offering a non-alcoholic cold drink for every consumer on every occasion. What companies like Diageo and Constellation will be looking for, I think, is covered by the alternative, coined by my friend, Jeffrey Slater, marketing chief of Nomacorc: they’ll all be squabbling over their ‘share of buzz’, and they won’t mind where that buzz comes from.

 

 

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