People are starting to hear, and feel, the buzz around the cannabis beverage brand, CANN. With only 2.5mg of THC per beverage, CANN is not geared towards medicinal or high-tolerance consumers, and has its sights instead set on the average White Claw drinker -- “the healthy hedonist.” CANN co-founder Luke Anderson said, "We’re going after consumers who never purchased cannabis from a dispensary before.” It turns out there are quite a few of these consumers in California—CANN now controls the largest share of the beverage market at 25% of overall revenue. With their robust DTC platform and mainstream appeal thanks to celebrity endorsements from Ellen DeGeneres and Gwenyth Paltrow, CANN seems to have found their canna-curious consumers.

In order to sell legal cannabis in any given state, you must also source cannabis from said state. That means that when you need to grow cannabis in places as humid as Hawaii or as cold as Maine, you have to heavily rely on indoor, climate-controlled grows that are not energy efficient. More scrutiny is being placed on the nascent cannabis industry with advocates pushing for more environmentally friendly regulations.

Tobacco companies in many ways are a natural fit for the cannabis industry: 1. They know how to operate in a regulated environment, 2. They have experience consistently growing a crop, and 3. They have advanced vaporization technology. In a recent interview, Phillip Morris’ CEO Andre Calantzopoulos said they are weighing the potential of a future cannabinoid-based offering. “We are doing all this work and will determine one day what avenues to pursue. But our priority is what we’re doing with our smoke-free products.” It will be interesting to see how any future cannabis investment will compare with Altria’s existing investment in Canadian licensed producer Cronos and British American Tobacco’s recent investment into Canadian licensed producer Organigram.

4/20 sales for 2020 were middling at best due to the timing of national pandemic lockdowns. Consumer demand was accelerated as people stocked up anticipating cannabis stores being shut down, reducing some of the importance of the shopping day. However, the sales holiday made its comeback in 2021. A new one-day sales record was hit with over $111m worth of cannabis sold across the United States on 4/20 alone, according to cannabis data firm Akerna. Interestingly enough, while 4/20 is often the best sales day of the year, the week before and after generally are among the worst sales weeks for the cannabis industry.