The Data Is In: Infused Beverages Are Actually Changing How People Drink

The alcohol-substitution claim has been floating around the cannabis beverage category almost since its inception. Walk any trade show floor, scroll any brand's Instagram, and you'll find it — infused beverages as the smarter, cleaner, hangover-free alternative to a drink. It's everywhere.

What you won't find much of is proof.

Most of what the industry calls "alcohol substitution positioning" is just that — positioning. A claim. An aspiration dressed up as a fact. Until recently, almost none of it had been measured in a rigorous, real-world way that could hold up to scrutiny.

That changed with the MoreBetter Real-World Infused Beverage Study.

The study tracked more than 5,000 participants across two cohorts and 20 brands. It was designed to capture how real people actually used infused beverages in their real lives — not in a lab, not with incentivized responses, but through consistent survey methodology applied over weeks, with follow-up months after the study closed. What came back wasn't a marketing talking point. It was a behavioral signal — and it was unmistakably consistent.

Here's what the data actually shows.

Two Independent Measures. One Story.

The research team built two separate opportunities to measure the relationship between infused beverage consumption and alcohol use. They ran at different times, used different methods, and drew on different questions. They told almost exactly the same story.

During the study: At the close of their three-week participation period, every Cohort 1 participant was asked how much they agreed with the statement: "I was consuming less alcohol while drinking [product]." Among the 1,975 respondents, 62.9% agreed or strongly agreed. Only 8.5% disagreed.

A second question examined the craving dimension: "How has your craving or desire for alcohol changed since trying [product]?" 54.0% reported a decrease or significant decrease in alcohol craving. Just 1.3% reported an increase.

Months after the study: Researchers re-contacted the cohort. Among the 1,171 participants who had been drinking alcohol prior to the study, 63.1% reported that they had reduced or eliminated alcohol consumption. Of that group, 13.5% had stopped drinking entirely.

Two surveys. Different methods. Months apart. The in-study agreement rate (62.9%) and the post-study behavioral recall (63.1%) landed within a single percentage point of each other.

That kind of alignment doesn't happen by accident. It's not a preference. It's not an intention. It's a durable behavioral shift — one that held up not just in the moment of using a new product, but months after participants had moved on from the study context entirely.

What People Actually Said (Without Being Asked)

Numbers tell one story. Words tell another. Often, the words are more useful.

When participants were asked whether they would consider using an infused beverage as a regular replacement for alcohol — and asked to explain why in one or two sentences — 1,141 said yes. Researchers pulled those open-text responses and identified the recurring themes. Four patterns emerged consistently, appearing across brands, demographics, and usage occasions.

1. The Morning After

The single most frequently mentioned theme — cited by 25% of "yes" respondents without any prompt — was hangovers. Not just the hangover itself, but everything that comes with it: the fatigue, the fog, the day lost to recovery.

One participant put it simply: "Because there are no hangovers with Fusion. No tiredness the same day or the next day."

Another framed it as a life-stage shift: "As I've gotten older my body doesn't process alcohol the same way. I've noticed with these drinks I don't have the hangover the next day. But the relief and relaxation that I get from drinking is still there."

This is a profound insight for anyone thinking about the infused beverage market. These participants aren't just describing a product preference — they're describing a trade they've evaluated and made. The functional experience they were after (relaxation, social ease, wind-down) remained available to them. What they lost was the cost. And for a growing portion of consumers, that cost — the next morning — has become the deciding factor.

2. Long-Term Health and Addiction Concerns

13% of respondents voluntarily referenced long-term health outcomes or concerns about alcohol dependence. This wasn't a question about health. It was an open-text field about replacement intent. They brought health into it themselves.

One response captured the tension many people carry quietly: "Alcohol is proven to be detrimental to human health but it is also highly addictive — making it difficult to fully quit. My goal is to significantly decrease alcohol consumption to better my health and overall quality of life."

This theme points to a consumer who is not casually curious about infused beverages. They're motivated. They've done their own cost-benefit analysis on alcohol and arrived somewhere uncomfortable — and they're looking for an alternative that doesn't require white-knuckling through a craving. That's a different kind of customer than someone sampling a new drink at a festival. That's someone with a real problem seeking a real solution.

3. The End-of-Day Ritual

What many participants described wasn't replacing a drink. It was replacing a moment.

The end-of-day ritual — the commute-is-over beer, the dinner-prep glass of wine, the signal to the nervous system that the workday is done — is deeply embedded in adult life in a way that's rarely acknowledged in wellness conversations. These participants weren't drinking because they were addicted. They were drinking because they needed a transition.

Infused beverages offered that transition without the downstream costs. As one participant described: "With a young child at home, I much prefer a no-hangover solution to my end-of-day relaxation. I still feel that buzz I am looking for, but no consequences if waking up in the middle of the night or early in the morning."

The ritual held. The consequence changed. For parents, caregivers, and anyone who needs to be functional at 3am when something goes wrong, that's not a minor shift. That's a lifestyle change.

4. Volume Reduction — Not Abstinence

The fourth pattern is perhaps the most commercially important, and the most underrepresented in how the industry talks about this topic.

Not everyone who uses cannabis beverages as an alcohol alternative stops drinking entirely. Many of them just drink less.

"Consuming a can has consistently decreased the amount of alcohol I desire later in the day. In cases where I typically would have desired 3-4 beers in an evening, when I consume this first I would then only consume 1-2 beers instead."

This is volume reduction — a real, measurable change in alcohol intake that doesn't fit neatly into the "sober curious" narrative but represents genuine behavioral change for millions of moderate drinkers. The consumer isn't quitting alcohol. They're displacing it. And for the infused beverage category, that consumer may represent the largest addressable segment of all.

Why This Data Is Different

The infused beverage category has a credibility problem — not because the products don't work, but because so much of the language around them hasn't been earned.

Claims about alcohol substitution, wellness benefits, and behavioral change have proliferated faster than the evidence supporting them. Retailers hear it constantly. Investors hear it. Consumers hear it. After a while, it all starts to sound the same — and the brands that actually deliver something meaningful get lost in the noise of brands that are simply claiming they do.

The MoreBetter Real-World Infused Beverage Study was designed to cut through that noise.

Spanning more than 5,000 participants, two separate cohorts, and 20 brands across multiple product formats and formulations, this study captures what actually happens when real people integrate infused beverages into their actual lives — not in a controlled lab setting with incentivized results, but in the messy, complicated context of everyday consumption.

The alcohol-substitution signal that emerged is the most robust the category has produced. The convergence between in-study agreement and post-study behavioral recall — 62.9% and 63.1% — is the kind of validation that most consumer wellness brands spend years and millions of dollars trying to manufacture. Here, it emerged organically from two independent measurement windows.

And the qualitative data reinforces every number. The four themes that appeared unprompted across 1,141 open-text responses — next-morning function, long-term health, ritual replacement, and volume reduction — are internally consistent and externally credible. These are the reasons real people make real changes to real habits.

What It Means for 23rd State

At 23rd State, we've always believed that what we make is something different — not just a drink, not just a way to get a buzz, but a genuinely better option for the moments that used to belong exclusively to alcohol. FRESH PRESS, SHAKE, our full product line — everything we put into the world is built around that belief.

The MoreBetter data doesn't just validate the category. It validates the consumer who has already made the switch and has been waiting for language that matches their experience. The person who reaches for a FRESH PRESS at the end of a long day instead of a beer. The parent who wants to wind down without waking up compromised. The person who has been quietly trying to drink less and finally found something that makes it easier.

These aren't fringe consumers. According to the data, they're the majority.

Sixty-three percent of prior drinkers reported reducing or eliminating alcohol months after the study closed. That's not a trend. That's a category-level behavioral pattern — and it's one that deserves to be communicated clearly, supported by evidence, and treated with the seriousness it's earned.

The MoreBetter study is bringing its full data set to the industry in June. We'll be watching closely. And we'll continue doing what we've been doing: making products worthy of the data that's emerging around them.

Promotional graphic for MoreBetter with text about real-world research and clinical-grade insights, featuring a blurred background of people working on devices.

The Bottom Line

The alcohol-substitution story was always going to be the most important story this category could tell. It's also the one most at risk of being told carelessly — with inflated claims, cherry-picked anecdotes, and positioning that outpaces proof.

The MoreBetter Real-World Infused Beverage Study changes the equation. For the first time, the industry has a large-scale, real-world data set showing that a majority of prior drinkers actually reduced or eliminated alcohol consumption after participating — and that the behavioral shift held up months after the study ended.

That's not a talking point. That's a finding.

For consumers who've been curious about making a change, for retailers evaluating what to stock, for anyone still asking whether infused beverages are really different — the answer is increasingly, measurably, yes.

The data is in. The story is real. And at 23rd State, we've been ready to tell it.

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