23rd State Op-Ed on the Cannabis Beverage Industry's Evidence Problem

We're grateful to the team at Marijuana Moment for publishing an op-ed by 23rd State founder Leah Kollross this week. The piece, titled "The Cannabis Beverage Industry Has An Evidence Problem, With Too Few Companies Submitting Products For Independent Scrutiny," makes a case we've been working through internally for months: cannabis beverage brands cannot keep asking regulators for nuanced, science-informed policy while the category as a whole declines to produce the science that would make that policy possible.

Marijuana Moment has been one of the most consistent and rigorous voices in cannabis journalism for years, and seeing this argument land on their site, in front of their readership of policymakers, operators, advocates, and journalists, is exactly the kind of placement we hoped this op-ed would find. If you have a few minutes, read the full piece on Marijuana Moment. Below, we want to share a little more context on why we wrote it and what we hope it does.

Why This Op-Ed, Why Now

The cannabis beverage category is in an awkward moment. It's growing fast, retailers are paying real attention, and consumers, especially the sober-curious crowd looking for an alcohol alternative, are showing up in numbers that didn't exist three years ago. At the same time, federal hemp policy is unsettled, state frameworks are being drafted in real time, and the regulatory questions that will define the next decade of this industry are being answered right now.

In that environment, the absence of independent product evidence is not a neutral fact. It's a structural risk. When regulators don't have data to distinguish a well-formulated, lab-validated infused beverage from an unverified product made with no quality controls, they default to precautionary frameworks that treat both the same way. That's how the responsible operators in this category end up paying the price for the irresponsible ones.

Leah's op-ed names that dynamic plainly. It also names something the industry rarely says out loud: a small minority of cannabis beverage manufacturers invest in any meaningful form of independent product validation. The rest are operating on internal testing, anecdotes, and feedback loops that confirm what people want to hear. That's not a sustainable foundation for a category that wants to be taken seriously by regulators, by retailers, or by the medical and harm reduction communities increasingly interested in what these products can do.

What the MoreBetter Real-World Infused Beverage Study Changed

A lot of the op-ed is grounded in our experience participating in the MoreBetter Real-World Infused Beverage Study, which Marijuana Moment has covered in the past when results from earlier cohorts were released. The headline findings are worth repeating: among more than 5,000 participants across multiple cohorts and twenty brands, infused beverages were associated with measurable reductions in daily alcohol use, a strong majority of participants reported the beverages felt safer for their health than alcohol, and nearly half of participants tried an infused beverage for the first time through the study.

For a category that's been arguing for years that THC beverages function as a credible alcohol alternative, that's the kind of independent, real-world data that moves conversations forward, especially in legislative offices and retail buying meetings.

But the part of the MoreBetter dataset that we keep coming back to internally is what it shows at the product level. The data confirms what good operators have always suspected and bad operators have always been able to obscure: not all THC beverages perform the same. Onset time varies measurably. Taste varies. Duration and consistency vary. For the first time, there's a dataset large enough to document those differences in a way no marketing team can talk around.

For brands that have invested in formulation quality and bioavailability, that's a competitive opportunity. For brands that have leaned on marketing claims without the science to back them up, it's a problem that's about to get harder to manage. Either way, the era of unverified performance claims in cannabis beverages is ending, and it should be ending. That's the underlying argument the op-ed makes.

The Regulatory Stakes Are Higher Than Most Operators Realize

One of the points Leah works through carefully in the Marijuana Moment piece is that participating in independent research is not primarily a marketing decision. It's a regulatory one.

We talk to operators all the time who treat clinical-style validation as a "nice to have," a budget line that gets cut when the quarter is tight. But the regulatory environment that brands will be operating in over the next five to ten years is being calibrated right now, on the basis of whatever evidence regulators can find. If the only data in front of a state legislator's office is a stack of marketing claims and consumer complaints, the policy that comes out the other end is going to reflect that. If there's a growing body of independent, peer-reviewed-style research showing that well-made infused beverages perform consistently, that they reduce alcohol consumption, that they support sleep and mood, that they don't produce the harms regulators are most worried about, the conversation looks very different.

This is the case Leah has been making to operators in her work on the National Cannabis Industry Association committees, and it's the case the op-ed makes publicly: every brand that participates in legitimate independent research contributes to a shared evidentiary base that the entire category benefits from. Every brand that opts out is free-riding on the credibility built by the ones that don't.

What It Looks Like to Put This Into Practice

We enrolled 23rd State products in MoreBetter's study because we thought the category needed operators who were willing to subject their formulations to independent scrutiny, regardless of how the data came back. We were reasonably confident our products would perform well, but the principle wasn't really about us. It was about modeling a posture toward research that the category as a whole needs more of.

Our FRESH PRESS THC + CBG Pear Cider, our BLUSH CRUSH Infused Bubbly, and our SHAKE Edible Glitter Drops are all formulated with a research-first orientation. That includes taking onset time seriously, dosing CBG alongside THC for a smoother experience, and being transparent about what the cannabinoid content is doing in the body. None of that is unique to us. Plenty of well-made beverages on the market right now would benefit from independent validation. The question is whether their operators are willing to put them through it.

The brands that will define this category long-term are not necessarily the ones with the slickest branding or the largest distribution footprints. They're the ones that can demonstrate, with measurable, independently verified evidence, that their products perform consistently and do what their packaging claims they do. That standard is achievable. It requires investment, transparency, and a willingness to let the data tell the story instead of the marketing copy.

Thank You, Marijuana Moment

A few words specifically about the placement. Marijuana Moment has built a readership that genuinely shapes how cannabis policy gets discussed in this country. Their reporting on the MoreBetter study findings helped move the conversation about infused beverages out of niche industry trade press and into a broader policy and journalism audience. Running this op-ed continues that work, and we don't take the placement for granted.

If you're an operator in the cannabis or hemp beverage space, a retailer trying to make smarter shelf decisions, a regulator working through how to frame state-level rules, or a consumer trying to figure out which brands are actually doing the work, we'd encourage you to read the full op-ed on Marijuana Moment and to subscribe to their newsletter while you're there. They've been one of the most reliable sources of cannabis news and analysis for nearly a decade, and they make a real effort to platform working operators and industry voices when the conversation calls for it.

What's Next

We'll keep participating in independent research. We'll keep publishing what we learn from it on our research hub. And we'll keep making the case, in trade press, in policy conversations, and in venues like the Marijuana Moment op-ed page, that this category's long-term durability depends on operators being willing to be measured, scrutinized, and held to standards that go beyond what any of us would have to meet if regulators were less skeptical and consumers were less discerning.

The window to build that foundation, before regulatory frameworks harden into something the category will be living with for a generation, is open right now. It will not stay open indefinitely. The op-ed lays out why. Marijuana Moment helped us get the argument in front of the people who need to hear it. We're grateful for the placement and for the readers who took the time to engage with it.

If you'd like to connect on this work, on independent research participation, or on anything else 23rd State is doing in Minnesota and beyond, we're easy to find. And if you haven't yet, go read the op-ed.

Recommended

• Why Half of THC Beverage Consumers Don't Buy
• Why People Really Drink THC Beverages
• How People Actually Use Infused Beverages Data Study
• Why How Fast You Feel It Changes Everything
• Here's What the Sleep Data from the Study Showed.
• What Happens to Your Smoking Habit When You Switch to a Cannabis Beverage?
• THC Beverages, Onset Time, Duration & No Hangover Data
• What Infused Beverage Shoppers Tell Us About Purchases

23rd State produces FRESH PRESS, BLUSH CRUSH, and SHAKE, all formulated with a research-first orientation and validated through participation in the MoreBetter Real-World Infused Beverage Study.