If beer companies were worried that the spread of legalized marijuana was going to take away from their business, they may feel assured to know that is not proving to be the case. According to a report from an investment firm. it was discovered that beer sales have actually increased in states where marijuana is legalized.
Over the course of the last few years, the Bernstein investment firm has studied beer sales in states that have formally legalized the use of recreational marijuana. During that span, it has reported an increase of beer sales by a slim margin of 0.1 percent. In the world of business though, an increase of 0.1 percent may look negligible, but it is far better-received than a drop by 0.1 percent. Anything that brings in extra money is always a win in business, so beer distributors and companies should be smiling as their customers smoke up. At the very least, it’s not resulting in major drops as what was originally feared.
The study discovered that people will tend to smoke and drink at the same time, which clearly does not harm the beer industry.
Weed and booze serve fundamentally different roles, and consumers know that. A study published in 2000 in Addictive Behaviors found that people were more likely to use alcohol than marijuana to be social and more likely to use marijuana to enhance their sense of well-being.
More often than not, people are smoking and drinking at the same time. A 2015 review of 8,626 Americans found that overwhelmingly, people who use both substances tend to use them at the same time. If anything, marijuana helps alcohol sales — this study found that simultaneous use also increased how often and how much people drank.
With these details now in mind, you have to wonder if or when a beer company will start aligning itself more with the marijuana-smoking community and use that in their sales pitches. It’s bound to happen.
[Inverse]
