Todd K. Harris does not pitch THC drinks as a cannabis novelty. He pitches them as a new kind of adult social ritual. The insight behind Plift, the hemp-derived THC beverage company he co-founded, is deceptively simple: people still want something to hold, sip and share in social settings. But a growing number of adults are questioning whether that drink needs to contain alcohol.

For Harris, that question is not theoretical, it is far more personal. He says people close to him had told him for years that he had a drinking problem. During COVID, his alcohol use escalated into what he describes as “drinking in obsession,” including a 1.75-liter bottle of Four Roses every few days, plus wine, beer and more. Later, while launching Plift and still working a corporate job, Harris says even one drink at dinner could derail the next morning. Instead of waking up early to build the company, he would stay in bed until his first call. Alcohol, he says, was costing him “a full work week every month” in lost productivity.

That became the entrepreneurial idea: what if adults could keep the social motion of drinking without defaulting to alcohol?

Plift is Harris’s answer. The company sits at the intersection of three powerful consumer shifts: the sober-curious movement, the rise of functional and alternative beverages, and the normalization of cannabis-derived products. Its bet is that low-dose THC drinks can move beyond dispensary culture and become part of mainstream adult social drinking.

The opportunity is early, complicated and increasingly competitive. It is also culturally timely. Excessive alcohol use causes about 178,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to the CDC. NIAAA reports that alcohol contributed to more than 4.2 million emergency department visits in 2022. At the same time, cannabis beverages remain a small but growing category. BDSA reported $54.6 million in cannabis beverage sales in Q1 2025, up 15% year over year, while beverages still represented only about 1% of total cannabis sales.

The Business Case For A Different Kind Of Buzz

Plift is not built on the idea that everyone will stop drinking alcohol. Harris is clear about that.

“I was a professional drinker,” he says. “I loved drinking.”

His argument is more nuanced. Consumers are not always replacing alcohol across their entire lives. They are replacing specific drinking occasions. A Wednesday night barbecue. A third drink. A concert. A night when someone wants to feel social without waking up depleted. The most durable alcohol alternatives are not usually built on shame. They are built on optionality. Consumers want more ways to modulate a night, a mood or a moment.

Plift’s low-dose THC drinks are designed for that middle ground: not sobriety as identity, not cannabis as counterculture, and not alcohol as the default. Instead, the brand is trying to make THC beverages feel familiar enough for mainstream adults to try.

“The notion of someone putting a drink to their mouth is the most social motion in the world,” Harris says.

That sentence captures the strategy. Gummies may be popular, but they are not especially social. Smoking is increasingly restricted or stigmatized. A can, however, already belongs at barbecues, dinners, parties, grocery fridges and concert venues.

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What Plift Is Actually Selling

Plift is a hemp-infused THC beverage brand built around flavor, accessibility and social use. The company describes itself as creating an accessible, flavor-forward hemp beverage and a progressive business built for the cannabis industry it wants to see.

Harris is part of a group of founders attempting to move THC beverages from cannabis subculture into mainstream consumer packaged goods.

This is why flavor matters so much. Before putting liquid in a can, Harris says Plift surveyed roughly 400 people about cannabis, why they did or did not use it and what they liked to drink at happy hour. The top cocktail inspirations included margarita, Moscow mule, old fashioned and Paloma.

Plift leaned citrus-forward because those were familiar social cues. But the company avoided calling the products literal margaritas or Palomas. The reason was practical: alcohol carries much of a cocktail’s flavor. If a can says margarita, consumers compare it to tequila. Plift wanted cocktail inspiration without promising an exact alcohol-free duplicate.

THC Drinks Are Not “Marijuana In A Can”

One of the biggest barriers for THC beverages is language. Critics often describe the category as “marijuana in a can.” The phrase is catchy, but it is misleading.

A THC drink is not the same as smoking high-potency cannabis flower. It is not the same as taking a homemade edible with unknown potency. It is not the same as a vape pen. A well-designed THC beverage is a measured, drinkable product with a specific dose per serving.

The legal distinction also matters. Hemp and marijuana are both cannabis, but federal law historically defined hemp as Cannabis sativa L. and derivatives with no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC on a dry-weight basis. That framework helped create the hemp-derived THC beverage market.

Harris makes a similar point. He argues that the licensed marijuana industry has “hijacked” the broader term cannabis, even though hemp and marijuana are both Cannabis sativa L. The difference, he says, comes down to potency and legal classification.

Dose is where the consumer misunderstanding becomes especially important. Harvard Health has noted that some low-dose cannabis beverages contain 2 to 4 mg of THC in an 8-ounce container, while some other products can contain far more, including products with much higher doses.

That range is exactly why “THC drink” should not be treated as one thing. Plift’s 4 mg positioning is part of the low-dose approach. Harris says the company chose 4 mg because 2.5 mg felt too low, while 5 mg could be too much for some consumers.

This is not “marijuana in a can.” It is a low-dose intoxicating beverage designed around gradual consumption.

The Alcohol Double Standard

The contradiction at the center of the THC beverage debate is hard to miss. Alcohol is everywhere. It is sold in grocery stores, airports, stadiums, hotels, corner stores, restaurants and gas stations. It is marketed through celebration, relaxation, sophistication and success. Yet its harms are extensively documented.

Low-dose THC drinks, by contrast, are often treated with suspicion simply because they contain cannabis-derived THC.

Some caution is justified. Intoxicating products need rules. They need potency limits, testing, labeling, age verification, packaging standards and responsible marketing. But the cultural panic is uneven.

A 4 mg THC beverage should be evaluated on dose, labeling, testing, age restriction and responsible marketing. It should not be treated as more socially reckless than a six-pack simply because alcohol has better lobbyists, deeper retail history and a more familiar brand vocabulary.

The hypocrisy is not that THC should get a free pass. It is that alcohol already has one.

The Consumer Education Problem

Harris says many consumers assume a THC beverage will feel like smoking cannabis when they were younger. He argues the experiences are very different. His comparison to alcohol is not about the effect. It is about pacing.

A person does not usually take one sip of alcohol and instantly become drunk. A beverage creates a gradual experience. Harris believes low-dose THC drinks can work the same way when consumers understand the dose and give the product time.

That education gap is one of the category’s biggest challenges. Consumers need to understand that THC affects people differently depending on tolerance, body chemistry, food intake, sleep, hydration, dose and experience. They also need to understand that THC drinks are not harmless wellness products. They are adult intoxicants.

That puts responsible brands in a delicate position. They need to normalize the format without minimizing the risks.

The Equity Argument

Harris’s critique of the cannabis industry goes beyond product format. He argues that the licensed marijuana market promised social equity but often created a system of “haves and have nots.”

The data largely supports the concern. MJBizDaily’s diversity reporting found that Black cannabis ownership remained extremely low in several major cannabis markets. Yahoo Finance, citing that report, noted that Black entrepreneurs accounted for 2.7% of cannabis businesses in Colorado, 3.8% in Michigan and 5.1% in Nevada. Few states reached even a 5% Black ownership rate.

That gap matters because cannabis legalization was often sold as a racial-justice correction after decades of disproportionate enforcement. Ownership has not consistently reflected that promise. Limited licensing helps explain why. When states cap cannabis licenses, the license itself becomes scarce and valuable. Scarcity favors applicants with capital, lawyers, consultants, compliant real estate, and political connections. California’s equity framework effectively acknowledges the issue. The state says Proposition 64 called for regulating cannabis in a way that reduces barriers to entry into the legal market, and its Cannabis Equity Grants Program exists to support local equity applicants and licensees.

That support is necessary but it also proves the point. If a market needs grants, fee relief, legal help and technical assistance to make entry possible for harmed communities, then the baseline system is not naturally equitable.

There are counterexamples. Illinois shows that better-designed equity programs can move the numbers. A state-commissioned disparity study found that from January 1, 2020, through January 31, 2023, 59% of dispensary licenses were issued to minority- or women-owned businesses, compared with 21% in the prior medical cannabis market. Across all licenses issued by the state, the figure was 60%.

That does not disprove Harris’s critique. It strengthens it. Equity can improve when policy is intentionally designed, funded and measured. But the national picture remains uneven.

Harris’s second argument is that hemp-derived THC beverages can lower some barriers because they operate more like traditional consumer packaged goods than state-licensed marijuana. A beverage brand that can sell through grocery, liquor, convenience or wholesale channels has more ways to reach consumers than a brand locked inside a limited dispensary system.

Minnesota offers one example. Under its low-dose THC framework, THC beverages moved into liquor stores, bars and major retail channels. That retail reality is structurally different from traditional dispensary cannabis. Still, hemp beverages are not automatically equitable. Brands need capital, compliance, insurance, manufacturing partners, lab testing, distribution, shelf space and retail relationships. As THC beverages scale, the same forces that shaped alcohol, cannabis and broader consumer packaged goods could reappear: consolidation, pay-to-play retail dynamics and better-capitalized companies crowding out smaller founders.

Here is the crux of it: Harris is right that hemp beverages may lower some structural barriers. But without thoughtful regulation and access to growth capital, the category could repeat the same ownership inequities it claims to solve.

Regulation Is The Wild Card

The biggest uncertainty hanging over Plift and the broader hemp-derived THC beverage market is regulation. Harris says investors often still do not understand how the hemp-derived beverage market was created or why products can be federally legal today. He also acknowledges that regulatory uncertainty gives investors pause.

The concern is justified. Legal analysis of recent federal changes has noted that rules scheduled to take effect on November 12, 2026, would shift hemp regulation toward total THC content and could significantly restrict intoxicating hemp-derived products.

For responsible operators, this creates a frustrating paradox. The brands asking for rules may be punished alongside the bad actors that made rules necessary. The best outcome would not be a regulatory free-for-all. It would be a clear adult-use framework: potency limits, testing, labeling, age verification, packaging rules, marketing restrictions and retail accountability. That kind of framework would allow consumers to choose legal, transparent products rather than pushing demand into less accountable channels.

What Comes Next For THC Drinks

Harris sees Plift as part of a generational shift. One of the most revealing moments in the interview came when he recalled asking his daughter what she would think if he pulled up to a dispensary. She replied that she would not think anything of it because he had been pulling into liquor stores with her since she was a kid.

The answer crystallized the future for him. Younger consumers may not view alcohol and cannabis through the same stigma hierarchy as older generations. They may see both as intoxicants, each with different risks, formats and occasions.

Harris is not arguing that everyone should replace alcohol with THC. He is arguing that adults deserve options — and that those options should not be limited by outdated stigma, industry protectionism or misleading phrases like “marijuana in a can.” The future of drinking will likely be more fragmented than the past. Some consumers will drink alcohol. Some will avoid it completely. Some will rotate between nonalcoholic beer, mocktails, sparkling water, THC drinks and cocktails depending on the occasion.

Plift’s bet is that the next generation of adult beverages will be defined less by alcohol content and more by intention. That is a bigger idea than a can. It is also why Harris may be building one of the more culturally relevant beverage brands in the hemp-derived THC Drinks space.