For a long time, cannabis news traveled through cannabis channels. Trade publications, industry newsletters, dispensary blogs, niche social communities. The people already inside the tent read it. Everyone else scrolled past.
That's changing — and a recent feature on NewsBreak is one more sign of how fast it's shifting.
NewsBreak, one of the largest local and national news aggregation platforms in the United States with over 50 million users, recently featured 23rd State's Cohort 2 results from the ongoing real-world beverage study conducted in partnership with MoreBetter. The release was picked up and shared with an audience that includes everyday consumers, curious newcomers, lifestyle readers, and people who have never once opened a cannabis trade publication in their lives.
That's the whole point.
We're grateful to NewsBreak for helping carry this story to a broader audience — and we want to take a moment to explain why that matters, what the data actually shows, and why a Minnesota cannabis beverage brand from Minneapolis is showing up in mainstream media feeds across the country.
Read the full NewsBreak coverage of 23rd State's Cohort 2 results here.
What Is the MoreBetter Real-World Infused Beverage Study?
MoreBetter is a leading platform for cannabis beverage research, and the Real-World Infused Beverage Study is exactly what it sounds like: a large-scale, ongoing effort to understand how real consumers experience infused beverages outside of controlled laboratory conditions. No observation rooms. No incentive structures designed to skew response. Just actual people buying and drinking THC beverages as part of their real lives, then reporting on what they experienced.
Cohort 2 of the study represents one of the largest consumer datasets ever assembled around the THC beverage category. Across more than 20 infused beverage products and thousands of documented experiences, the study captures what people are actually choosing, how often they're coming back, how they'd describe the experience, and whether the product lived up to what they were looking for.
23rd State's FRESH PRESS — our THC + CBG pear cider, dosed at 10mg THC and 10mg CBG per serving, and SHAKE with 3mg THC and 9mg CBG — were among the top performers in Cohort 2. That result didn't come from a focus group or a curated tasting panel. It came from the market, doing what markets do: rewarding products that deliver.
Why NewsBreak Coverage Is a Different Kind of Win
We've been fortunate to receive coverage from industry-focused outlets — trade publications and platforms that serve professionals inside the cannabis and beverage space. That coverage matters. It builds credibility within the industry, signals to retail buyers and distributors that the data is legitimate, and keeps us accountable to the peers who know this space best.
But NewsBreak is something different.
NewsBreak's audience is overwhelmingly made up of general consumers — people who are interested in local and national news, lifestyle content, health and wellness, food and drink, and the kinds of stories that show up in their feeds based on what they care about day to day. When a cannabis beverage study appears alongside stories about community events, food trends, and consumer product news on a platform like NewsBreak, it signals that the conversation around THC beverages has genuinely crossed over.
This matters for a specific reason: the people who most need to understand what a high-quality THC beverage experience looks like are not the ones already reading Brewbound or BevNET. They're the ones still figuring out whether cannabis is something they want to explore at all. They're the sober-curious consumers who've been curious about an alcohol alternative but aren't sure where to start. They're the weekend social drinkers who've heard about THC beverages from a friend and want to know more before they try one.
NewsBreak's coverage of our Cohort 2 results is a door opening for those consumers — and we don't take that lightly.
The Alcohol Alternative Story Is Breaking Into the Mainstream
Here's the larger context that makes the NewsBreak feature meaningful: alcohol consumption in the United States is declining, and it's declining fastest among adults under 40. The sober-curious movement isn't a trend anymore — it's a sustained cultural shift, and it's creating an enormous amount of consumer appetite for beverages that can fill the social and sensory role that alcohol once occupied without the downsides that come with it.
THC beverages are a compelling answer to that appetite — but only if consumers can trust what they're reaching for. The fear that has kept so many canna-curious people on the sidelines isn't really about cannabis. It's about unpredictability. They've heard horror stories about edibles that took two hours to hit and then hit too hard. They're not sure how 10mg compares to 5mg compares to 2.5mg. They don't know which brands have done the work and which ones are just riding a wave.
That's precisely the information gap that real-world consumer research like the MoreBetter study is built to close. When thousands of actual consumers report back on what they experienced — onset, intensity, enjoyability, likelihood to repurchase — it creates a signal that no amount of marketing copy can manufacture. And when those results show up in platforms like NewsBreak, they reach the people who need to see them most.
What FRESH PRESS Cohort 2 Results Actually Tell You
FRESH PRESS topped Cohort 2 not because of its label design or its distribution footprint or its ad spend. It topped Cohort 2 because it tastes genuinely good and it delivers an experience that people want to repeat.
That sounds simple. In practice, it's the result of two years of R&D before we ever put a product on a shelf. Our founders spent that time obsessing over the right cannabinoid ratios, the right formulation approach, the right flavor profile — because we believed from the beginning that a THC beverage could only earn mainstream adoption if it competed on the same terms as any great beverage: flavor, consistency, and an experience that brings people back.
The 10mg THC + 10mg CBG formulation in FRESH PRESS wasn't a round number we settled on casually. CBG — cannabigerol — is a minor cannabinoid that research increasingly suggests may help modulate the intensity of THC's effects, softening the edge of the experience and contributing to what many of our consumers describe as a balanced, social feeling. It's why FRESH PRESS works for first-timers and why it works equally well for experienced cannabis consumers who want something they can drink socially without losing the thread of their evening.
When the Cohort 2 data showed FRESH PRESS performing at the top of the category, it validated a hypothesis we'd been building products around since day one: that doing the science right, and caring about the consumer experience above everything else, eventually shows up in the numbers.
A Thank-You to NewsBreak — and to Everyone Sharing This Story
To the NewsBreak editorial team and the platform's content community: thank you for helping carry the story of 23rd State's Cohort 2 results to readers who might never have encountered it otherwise. Cannabis beverage research reaching a general consumer audience is exactly the kind of normalization this category needs, and platforms that are willing to publish that coverage with the same seriousness they'd bring to any food, drink, or wellness story are helping accelerate a shift that's already underway.
To our MoreBetter research partners: thank you for building the infrastructure that makes data like this credible and shareable. The work you're doing to create rigorous, real-world benchmarks for the THC beverage category is foundational — not just for brands like 23rd State, but for the consumers who deserve to make informed decisions about what they're drinking.
And to every person who found their way to this post through a NewsBreak feed, a shared link, or a curious search: welcome. We're a Minnesota brand, and we built 23rd State because we believed the world needed a better option — one that brought people together the way a shared drink always has, with more intention and less regret.
FRESH PRESS is that option. The data agrees.
Ready to find 23rd State near you? Visit our store locator at 23state.com.
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The MoreBetter Real-World Infused Beverage Study is an observational consumer study. Individual experiences with THC and CBG products vary. 23rd State products contain THC and are intended for adults 21 and older in states where legal.
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