🌿Bongs & Booze: How Big Alcohol Got High on Desperation...
🗞️ THE WTF GLOBAL TIMES
When beer goes bust, the breweries roll joints and join the cannabis cocktail cartel
By: Canna D. Lite, Senior Correspondent for Mood-Altering Beverages and Capitalist Meltdowns
NEW YORK, July 23, 2025 — Once upon a time, America's liquor shelves were ruled by vodka tyrants, whiskey warlords, and IPA evangelists. But those kings are falling fast. From the ashes of slumping beer sales and cancer warnings now rises a fizzy, minty rebellion brewed in stainless steel tanks and infused with federally legal weed: THC seltzers.
You heard it right. While the alcohol industry stumbles out of its post-pandemic hangover and tries to remember where it left its pants (and market share), cannabis drinks—those giggle-inducing, anxiety-reducing bubbly potions—are crashing the party. And the boozy old guard? They’re trying to buy their way in before they’re kicked out entirely.
Big Booze to Big Blunt: An Existential Crisis in Every Pint
Forget “Bud Light vs Modelo.” The real battle of 2025 is Lagunitas vs Lemon Kush Lime Seltzer.
After years of trying to ignore the giggling green elephant in the room, the alcohol titans are now reluctantly eyeing the fridge full of hemp-derived THC drinks at the local liquor store and whispering, “...bro?”
Sales of traditional booze have plummeted like a drunk frat boy off a balcony. Beer volumes down 6%. Wine down 9%. Spirits, too tipsy to care, down 5.6%. Meanwhile, soccer moms are chugging cannabis seltzers like it's yoga in a can.
In short: the bros are out, the buzzed aunties are in, and corporate America is racing to slap a label on it.
Trump Comments (Direct from Mar-a-Lago, Between Sips of Diet Coke)
“Look, I’ve had the best drinks—tremendous drinks. I know drinks. But now they’re putting marijuana in them? What’s next, cocaine in Kool-Aid?”
“Big Alcohol? Sad. They should’ve stuck with winning. I told them years ago—get a golf course and a steakhouse, forget beer. Nobody wants your IPA with hints of tire fire.”
“These pot sodas—they’re gonna be huge. We’ll put them in Trump Tower. Call it ‘Cannabis Cola: Make America Chill Again.’ Believe me. I’m already trademarking it.”
From Booze Barons to Bud Bros: A Timeline of Capitalist Confusion
Once burned, now baked—Big Alcohol is approaching the cannabis seltzer revolution like it’s a second divorce: cautiously, expensively, and under pressure from younger partners.
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Constellation Brands, makers of Corona, once threw billions at Canadian cannabis firm Canopy Growth. It flopped harder than Biden at a NATO presser. Now they’re sniffing around the hemp aisle again, hoping no one remembers.
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Pernod Ricard, proud parent of Absolut Vodka, is “circling” brands like Brez—because nothing says French elegance like weed water.
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Boston Beer, creators of Sam Adams, has already launched “Teapot” in Canada. Because nothing screams liberty like microdosed iced tea in a hockey nation.
These aren't just business strategies. They're midlife crises, bottled and carbonated.
The Rise of the ‘Stoned Soccer Mom’
Forget the old stoner stereotype. Today’s THC drink consumer isn’t a dreadlocked dude in a tie-dye shirt—she’s Karen, 37, drives a minivan, and just found out she can sip a pineapple-flavored buzz without the calories of wine or the judgment of her HOA.
According to Top Ten Liquors in Minnesota, THC drinks now make up 15% of their business and are on pace to beat wine. “The soccer mom has really embraced the category,” says CEO Jon Halper, while watching Chardonnay sales cry in a corner.
Even Southern Crown Partners—an actual Budweiser distributor—is selling more hemp seltzer than cabernet. Somewhere, August Busch IV is screaming into his hops pillow.
Warning: Side Effects May Include Market Domination
Cannabis drinks made from hemp-derived THC are now legal in liquor stores across much of the U.S. Why? Because hemp isn’t “marijuana,” it’s marijuana’s boring cousin. But here’s the twist: you can still get high off it. Legally.
This sneaky loophole has unlocked a $1 billion market in 2025—and is projected to quadruple by 2028. Meanwhile, alcohol companies are like, “Wait… we’re allowed to do this now???”
Big Alcohol’s Rehab Plan: Buy, Blame, Buzz
Remember when Molson Coors tried CBD beverages and bailed? When Anheuser-Busch ghosted Tilray like a bad Bumble date? They’ve been through all the stages of market denial—investment, embarrassment, silence—and now we’re at the “desperately rebranding” phase.
That means:
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White-labeling THC drinks through distributors in Georgia, Tennessee, and beyond
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Calling weed-infused iced tea “a lifestyle beverage”
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Assembling tasting panels to compare “mouthfeel” between hemp and marijuana like they’re reviewing fine wine at a Bob Marley concert
Boston Beer’s expert tasters? Couldn’t tell the difference. Which is good, because neither could the consumers—they’re just here to forget inflation and get cozy in a cloud of vanilla haze.
Top Comment Picks
@IPA_Overdose: “First they came for the hops, and I said nothing. Now I’m microdosing watermelon fizz and watching Judge Judy. Send help.”
@RealKarenAgain: “THC seltzer > Chardonnay. I don’t scream at my kids anymore, just quietly disassociate while folding laundry. 10/10.”
@420BainCapital: “If Constellation buys one more weed startup, I’m renaming my ETF ‘ETF-inated.’”
@NoMoreBeerBelly: “I replaced Coors with cannabis cola and lost 10 pounds and my wife. Worth it.”
Final Thought: Pour One Out for Beer, Light One Up for Capitalism
The weed seltzer revolution isn’t just a fad—it’s a referendum. On health. On flavor. On the fact that drinking should make you feel fuzzy and happy, not bloated and prone to screaming “WOOOO” at strangers.
Big Alcohol, once the monarch of mixers, now plays catch-up in the THC-infused aisles of progress. And they better move fast, before Cannabis LaCroix becomes the next Red Bull.
Meanwhile, in boardrooms across America, executives are now Googling “Does weed pair with whiskey?” and asking interns if TikTok influencers can make bongs sexy.
The sober-curious, the gluten-free, the Gen Zs and the Gen X moms—they’ve all joined the canna-cocktail cult. And as regulations shift, so will the shelves.
Next Week on WTF GLOBAL TIMES:
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