Business Analysts Back Pot Over Beer

beer, Business Analysts Back Pot Over BeerThe cannabis industry is growing, and that could mean bad news for the beer industry, and more specifically the craft beer industry according to business analysts.

Here’s the deal…

Cowen’s beverage, tobacco and cannabis investment analyst Vivien Azer, is betting big on the fledgling cannabis industry which she projects is worth $50 billion today and could reach $75 billion by 2030.

But it’s telling that at the same she’s become increasingly cautious about beer stocks…

“We view the interaction with alcohol as being the most obvious to us as we think of these products as substitute social lubricants,” Cowen managing director and senior research analyst, told  CNBC on Friday, “About 80 percent of consumers do report some kind of reduction in alcohol consumption when they’re also engaging in cannabis consumption.”.

And Azer is far from alone in calling attention to the ‘budding’ industry…

Big money is pouring into the legal cannabis market, potentially steering more US consumer spending toward weed at a time when craft beer’s growth is undeniably slowing.

Constellation Brands’, home to Corona, Modelo, Ballast Point and Florida’s Innovative Funky Buddha, almost 10 percent purchase of Canopy Growth, the world’s largest publicly traded cannabis company, was a shot  across the bow of the drinks industry…

As was Keith Villa’s announcement that after two decades of nurturing the Blue Moon brand for MillerCoors, he and his wife were getting into the’ pot beer’ biz.

beer, Business Analysts Back Pot Over BeerWhen beer industry players like Anheuser-Busch’s former marketing head Chris Burggraeve, announce that “weed is the new craft beer,’ you sense that change is in the air, and that change smells like marijuana.

And by no means are we suggesting that craft beer is going away…absolutely not.

We’re only saying that right now the cannabis industry is red hot and attracting the kind of money and media attention that the craft beer biz used too, not all that long ago.

And if you think that recreational marijuana’s ongoing march to legalization isn’t going to impact the craft beer biz, you’d better check what you’re smoking.

Because, as far as we’re concerned, it’s not a question ‘if’ pot will impact craft beer…It’s a question of ‘to what degree.’

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