How Much THC in a Beverage Is Actually Safe?

What 18,065 Real-World Data Points Taught Us

If you've ever stood in front of a cooler full of THC drinks wondering how many milligrams is too many — or whether the answer changes when you've already had a glass of wine — you're asking the right question. It's also the question almost no one in the category has been able to answer with real data.

Until now.

We just spent months working through the results of one of the largest real-world studies ever conducted on THC beverages — the MoreBetter Real-World Infused Beverage Study, which followed more than 5,000 participants across 20 brands and generated 18,065 daily observations of how people actually drink, mix, and experience these products in their everyday lives. Out of all the findings, one stands out as the single most useful thing we've ever been able to share with our consumers.

It's called a dose-risk model. And it doesn't just tell you what a "safe dose" looks like on paper. It tells you what actually causes a bad experience in the real world — and the answer might surprise you.

Want the deeper dive?

What you just read is the consumer-facing shape of the model. There's a whole layer underneath it — the methodology, the full set of variables the researchers controlled for, the cannabinoid-specific breakdowns, and the parts of the analysis that genuinely surprised us once we saw the numbers — that doesn't fit cleanly into a blog post. So we're hosting a webinar to walk through it properly. We're co-presenting alongside the Network of Applied Pharmacognosy, the research organization founded by Dr. Miyabe Shields and Dr. Riley Kirk, who bring the scientific rigor side of the conversation in a way we couldn't on our own. The session is built around the alcohol-replacement case for cannabinoids and uses this study as the evidence backbone, with plenty of room for questions from the people who actually drink these products and want to understand them better. If that sounds like your kind of evening, register here — seats are free, and we'd love to see you there.

Join the webinar June 4 register here

The Question Every THC Beverage Drinker Eventually Asks

At what dose does a THC beverage start carrying a real risk of an unpleasant experience?

That question gets asked at dispensary counters, in liquor store aisles where hemp-derived THC beverages now sit next to seltzers, and across every comment section under every cannabis drink review on the internet. It's the question that drives most of the anxiety newer consumers bring to the category — the worry that one more sip is the sip that turns the night sideways.

Here's the honest answer most brands won't give you: for a long time, no one really knew. The cannabis beverage space moved fast, products multiplied, and the data lagged behind the shelves. People were making dose decisions based on anecdote, packaging guidance, and best guesses.

We wanted a better answer than that — for ourselves as a brand, and for the people drinking our products. So when the MoreBetter study results came in, we paid close attention to one specific piece of the analysis: a statistical model designed to map exactly where risk lives in the dose curve.

What the Study Actually Measured

The MoreBetter Real-World Infused Beverage Study isn't a marketing survey or a panel poll. It's a longitudinal study with more than 5,000 participants logging their consumption, their session conditions, and their outcomes in real time — over thousands of sessions across two cohorts and 20 brands.

To make sense of the relationship between dose and negative effects, researchers used something called a Generalized Additive Mixed Model (GAMM). That's the statistical method built specifically for messy, real-world data where the relationship between two variables — like THC dose and bad outcomes — isn't a straight line. Drinking 10mg isn't twice as risky as drinking 5mg in a simple multiplier. The relationship curves, plateaus, and sometimes bends sharply. A GAMM is the right tool to map that shape.

What came back from the model was two findings worth paying close attention to, because they reframe almost everything most people assume about THC beverage safety.

Finding One: At a Typical Dose, the Risk Is Low

The average participant in the study landed their daily THC dose in what the model identified as a low-risk zone. We're talking single-digit probability of experiencing any negative effect from the beverage at typical use levels.

That's a finding that deserves to sit with you for a moment.

For all the hand-wringing the broader culture has done about cannabis beverages — for all the alarming headlines and the dose-limit debates and the social media warnings — the model says something pretty clear about what's actually happening when consumers use these products in the real world at normal doses. Negative experiences are uncommon. The category isn't a minefield. Most people, most of the time, drink a THC beverage and have an experience that lands somewhere between pleasant and uneventful.

This matches what we hear from our own community. The vast majority of feedback we get on our SHAKE, FRESH PRESS, and Blush Crush Infused Bubbly lines is from people describing a relaxing evening, a social occasion handled gracefully, or a successful alcohol swap on a Friday night. The bad nights, when they happen, are the exception — and as you're about to see, they tend to share a specific pattern.

But before we get to the second finding, it's worth naming what the first one means for you as a consumer: if you're using a THC beverage at a typical, label-guided dose, you're operating in a zone where the data says you're statistically very unlikely to have a problem. That's not marketing. That's 18,065 daily observations talking.

Finding Two: The Beverage Wasn't the Risk. The Mixing Was.

Here's where the model got really interesting — and really useful.

When the researchers looked at participants who consumed the beverage on its own, with no other intoxicants involved, the negative-effect curve climbed slowly as dose increased. And here's the part that genuinely surprised us: across the entire observed dose range in the study, including doses at the higher end of what real consumers were drinking, the curve never crossed the 50% probability mark for negative effects.

Read that again. Beverage alone. Across the full real-world dose range. The probability of a negative effect never hit 50%.

Then the researchers ran the same model on participants who layered the beverage on top of alcohol and other cannabis. The shape of the curve changed completely. The 50% probability mark — the inflection point where a bad experience becomes more likely than not — was crossed at roughly one-third of the THC dose where product-only use still tested as low-risk.

One third.

That is an enormous shift, and it tells you exactly where the actual safety lever sits in the category. It's not the milligrams in the can. It's what those milligrams are sharing your bloodstream with.

What "Stacking" Really Does to Your Experience

In the cannabis world, we sometimes call this "stacking." It's the practice — usually unintentional — of layering different intoxicants in the same session. A THC seltzer with dinner, a beer with friends after, a hit off someone's joint on the back porch, maybe an edible nightcap. None of those choices feels like a big deal in isolation. Stacked together, they become a different kind of session.

The MoreBetter dose-risk model put a number on what stacking does. It compresses the safe dose range by roughly two-thirds. A beverage that's well within a comfortable zone on its own becomes meaningfully riskier when it's the third intoxicant of the night rather than the only one.

This is the single most important piece of consumer education we think this category has produced. Because the dominant safety conversation in cannabis beverages has been about the can — about how many milligrams should legally be allowed, about what dose limit the regulators should set, about whether 5mg or 10mg or 25mg is the responsible ceiling.

The data says we've been arguing about the wrong variable.

The dose didn't make the experience risky. The stacking did. At low doses, on their own, everyone in the study looked roughly the same. The divergence — the bad nights, the negative outcomes — only showed up when consumers layered the beverage on top of alcohol and other cannabis.

If you want to use THC beverages well, that single insight is more valuable than almost any other piece of advice anyone can give you.

How to Use This Information at Your Next Occasion

So what does a smart consumer do with this?

A few things, drawn directly from what the data is telling us.

Treat the beverage as a substitute, not an addition. The cleanest, lowest-risk session is one where the THC beverage is doing the work alcohol used to do — not joining it at the table. This is exactly the use case we built 23rd State for in the first place. A FRESH PRESS instead of a cocktail. A SHAKE instead of a hard seltzer. A Blush Crush in the glass that would otherwise hold rosé. When the beverage is the only intoxicant in the session, the data says you're in the part of the dose curve where negative effects are statistically rare across the entire observed range.

Be honest about your stack. If you know you're going to be in a setting where alcohol is going to happen, or where someone is going to pass a joint around, that's the moment to pull your beverage dose down — not push it up. The model says the safe range collapses to about one-third of what it was when you're stacking. Adjust accordingly.

Watch the second-drink mental math. A lot of the worst experiences people describe in cannabis beverages come from the moment when, twenty minutes in, the first drink hasn't fully landed yet, and they decide to crack a second one to speed things up. That's a stacking move with yourself — you're layering dose two on top of dose one before dose one has finished announcing itself. Give your first drink the time it needs.

Trust the low end. One of the most reassuring things in the MoreBetter data is how robust the low-dose zone is. You don't need to drink a lot to enjoy the experience you came for. Most of our customers find their sweet spot well below the upper end of what's available on shelves — and the data backs up that this is exactly where the smart money sits.

Why This Matters for the Category Right Now

We're sharing this consumer-side blog post for a reason that goes beyond our own product line. The cannabis beverage industry is heading into a stretch of intense dose-limit debate. Regulators, lawmakers, and public health voices are going to be answering the question "what's a safe dose?" — and they're going to be answering it for the industry whether or not the industry brings real data to the table.

The MoreBetter dose-risk model is exactly the kind of evidence those conversations need. Not because it tells anyone what to do, but because it shifts the conversation from a guess about milligrams to a real-world map of where risk actually lives. And the answer the data gives us is one that makes a lot of intuitive sense once you see it: the risk isn't really about the drink. It's about the combination.

That has implications for how we talk about responsible use, how we design occasions, how we educate new consumers, and how we frame the broader case for cannabis beverages as a meaningful alternative to alcohol. The single most powerful version of this product category is one where consumers reach for it instead of alcohol, not alongside alcohol — and the data finally gives us the receipts to explain why.

Where Our Products Sit on the Curve

The MoreBetter model gives us the category-level shape. The next layer of detail — the part specific to 23rd State — is where our particular products sit on that curve. That's a function of our formulation, our cannabinoid profile, and the dose range we've intentionally designed to keep consumers in the low-risk zone.

Our entire product line was built around an idea that the dose-risk data is now validating: that you don't need to push milligrams to deliver a worthwhile experience. SHAKE, FRESH PRESS, and Blush Crush were each formulated to sit comfortably within a sessionable, alcohol-alternative dose range. The kind of dose where, if you're using the product the way we designed it to be used — on its own, not stacked — the curve says you're operating in the part of the model where bad experiences are rare.

This isn't a happy accident. It's the entire thesis of the brand. We're a Minnesota cannabis beverage company founded by a woman who built her product line specifically around alcohol substitution, and that means we've always been designing for the use case the data now confirms is the safest one in the category.

The Honest Bottom Line

We share research, we cite studies, and we put data on our packaging — but we also try to be honest about what the evidence does and doesn't say. So here's the honest bottom line from this particular piece of the MoreBetter analysis.

A THC beverage, at a typical dose, used on its own, is a low-risk product for the vast majority of consumers. The dose-risk curve is gentle, the negative-effect probability stays low across the realistic dose range, and the math supports the case we've been making about cannabis beverages as a meaningful alternative to alcohol.

A THC beverage layered onto a session that already includes alcohol and other cannabis is a meaningfully different product. Not because anything about the can changed, but because your body is now processing a stack instead of a single input. The safe-dose range compresses sharply. The risk of a negative experience climbs faster. That's not the beverage's fault, and it's not a reason to be afraid of cannabis drinks. It's a reason to be intentional about how you use them.

If you take one thing from this piece, take this: the cleanest, most predictable, most rewarding way to use a THC beverage is to let it be the drink. Not the third drink. Not the side drink. The drink.

That's the use case the data supports. That's the use case we built our brand around. And that's the use case we think makes cannabis beverages one of the most important consumer products to come out of the legal cannabis era — a real, evidence-backed alternative to alcohol for the people who want one.

We'll keep sharing the science as it comes in. The MoreBetter study has more layers we haven't unpacked publicly yet, and we'll be working through them in this space over the coming months. If you want to make sure you don't miss the next one, sign up for our newsletter and we'll bring the data straight to your inbox.

In the meantime — pour yourself a SHAKE, a FRESH PRESS, or a Blush Crush. Let it be the drink. And enjoy the part of the curve the data says is yours.

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