Last week we wrote about retail scan data showing hemp THC beverages hit $239 million in sales, up 135%, while alcohol shrank. A fair objection to that story: retail scan data covers a slice of the market, and the people publishing it usually have something to sell.
So here is a second dataset, gathered a completely different way, that lands in almost exactly the same place.
The Hemp Beverage Alliance has published The Future of Drinking, the first independently verified sales dataset assembled for this category. It draws on anonymized depletion data — distributor-to-retailer shipments, the actual movement of product through the supply chain — from 26 participating brands, covering 2,308,510 case equivalents across 2024 and 2025. The processing was done by Vermont Information Processing, the data infrastructure behind wholesale beverage reporting nationwide.
Retail scans measure what leaves the shelf. Depletions measure what arrives on it. Two independent methods, two independent sources, and the growth rate comes out at 135% and 133%. When measurements that share no methodology agree that closely, the finding is probably real.
The headline numbers
| Metric | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Case equivalent volume | 692,435 | 1,616,075 | +133% |
| Points of distribution | 133,465 | 305,653 | +129% |
| Retail accounts sold | 25,279 | 43,496 | +72% |
| Average monthly volume | 57,703 | 134,673 | +133% |
| Average monthly velocity | 7.40 | 8.29 | +12% |
The number that actually matters
Skip the 133%. The important line in that table is the last one.
Velocity measures how much product moves through each individual account. When a category expands its account base quickly, velocity almost always falls — you are adding thousands of new stores that have not yet built a reorder habit, and they drag the average down. That is the normal, expected pattern, and it is what a fad looks like on a spreadsheet: lots of new doors, thin movement through each one.
That is not what happened. The account base grew 72% and velocity went up 12%, from 7.40 to 8.29. Existing accounts deepened their orders at the same time the category was adding roughly 18,000 new retail relationships. Both things at once.
Translated out of industry language: stores that started carrying hemp drinks kept reordering, and reordered more. People are coming back.
Seasonality is the quiet tell
Monthly volume in 2025 tracked the adult beverage calendar almost exactly — a summer peak, a dip, then year-end strength. July was the strongest month in both years, with velocity hitting 8.34 in 2024 and 9.55 in 2025. Summer months ran roughly 9 to 10% above the rest of the year in both periods.
This sounds like a boring detail. It is not. Novelty products spike once and decay. Established categories breathe on a calendar, because they are attached to real occasions — cookouts, holidays, patios, Friday nights. Hemp beverages are now breathing on the same calendar as beer and spirits.
The other seasonal detail worth noting: the strongest year-over-year gains came in January and February 2025, up 21.8% and 22.2%. Accounts entered the year with the category already stocked and reordered immediately, rather than waiting for the summer ramp that defined 2024. Dry January is doing real work here.
The dose shift: mainstream is winning
The finding we found most useful for how we buy: the 6–10mg THC segment grew to overtake the over-10mg segment in 2025.
For the first few years, this category was sold to people who already knew what they wanted — and what they wanted was strength. That is what an early-adopter market looks like. The shift toward 6–10mg is what it looks like when a category stops being for enthusiasts and starts being for everyone else: people who want a glass of something after work, not an experience.
It also matches what we hear. The most common question we get is not "what is your strongest drink." It is "what should I start with." If you are in that group, 10mg is the mainstream standard, and 2.5–5mg is where to start if you are new. The 50mg end of the shelf is a real product for a real customer, but it is no longer where the category lives.
This is a floor, not a ceiling
Worth being precise about what this dataset does not include. It captures distributor-to-retailer movement from 26 participating brands inside the VIP network. It does not capture direct-to-consumer sales, direct-to-retailer shipments, or any brand outside that network.
The real hemp beverage marketplace is larger than 1.6 million cases. Nobody knows exactly how much larger. But every number above should be read as a conservative one.
The clock in the corner of the room
All of this growth is happening under a deadline. The hemp language Congress attached to the November 2025 government funding bill redefines hemp in a way that would effectively eliminate this category on November 12, 2026 unless Congress acts first. Several bills with bipartisan support have been introduced to extend the timeline and build a real regulatory framework instead.
The uncomfortable irony sitting in this report: the category built the compliance infrastructure that regulators say they want — age gating, batch testing, published certificates of analysis, responsible labeling — and did it voluntarily, ahead of any federal requirement. A definition that makes the category unworkable does not just hit brands. It hits hemp farmers, ingredient suppliers, co-packers, testing labs, distributors, retailers, and the roughly 43,000 stores now stocking these drinks.
The Hemp Beverage Alliance runs a free policymaker outreach tool at their Action Center — membership is not required to use it. We have also put together our own Take Action page, and a plain-English explainer of what the 2026 hemp law actually says.
What we take from it
We do not make these drinks. We carry them — 22 brands, every batch backed by a published certificate of analysis. That means our job is reading the category accurately and stocking accordingly, and this report changes two things about how we do that.
First, we are weighting the shelf toward the 5–10mg band, because that is demonstrably where drinkers are going. Second, we are treating January as a real season rather than a dead month, because the data says accounts that carry into the new year reorder harder than anyone expected.
Frequently asked
How fast is the hemp beverage industry growing? Independently verified depletion data shows 133% year-over-year volume growth in 2025, from 692,435 to 1,616,075 case equivalents. Separate retail scan data puts dollar growth at 135%.
How many stores sell hemp beverages? Retail accounts in the measured dataset grew from 25,279 in 2024 to 43,496 in 2025, with points of distribution reaching 305,653. Actual figures are higher, since the dataset covers 26 brands rather than the whole market.
What THC dose is most popular in hemp drinks? The 6–10mg segment overtook the over-10mg segment in 2025, indicating the category is moving from early adopters toward mainstream drinkers.
Are hemp beverages legal? Hemp-derived Delta-9 THC beverages containing no more than 0.3% THC by dry weight were legalized federally under the 2018 Farm Bill. As of 2026 more than half of US states expressly or implicitly permit their sale. Federal language enacted in November 2025 threatens that status as of November 12, 2026 unless Congress acts.
Source: Hemp Beverage Alliance. The Future of Drinking: The Hemp Beverage Marketplace 2024–2025. Lakewood, CO: Hemp Beverage Alliance, 2026. Data partner: VIP (Vermont Information Processing). Figures cited are from the complimentary snapshot; the full report includes state-level detail, regional velocity, and on-premise versus off-premise breakdowns. Summary and analysis above are our own.
Nothing here is legal, financial, or medical advice. Hemp THC beverages are for adults 21 and over.