What Are THC Drinks? A Plain Guide to What Is in the Can

A can of seltzer with THC in it. That is most of the answer, and the rest is detail worth knowing before you pick one out of the cooler.

The category arrived quietly. Five years ago hemp beverages were a novelty on one shelf at the back of the store. Now they take up a whole cooler door, and the people buying them are mostly not the people buying flower. They are adults who want something to hold at a cookout that is not a beer.

What is actually in the can

Water, carbonation, a flavour, and a measured amount of hemp-derived THC. That is the whole recipe for most of what we carry. The dose is printed on the can, usually somewhere between 2mg and 10mg. Some have CBD in there alongside it, in which case both numbers are listed separately.

That printed number is the entire point of the format. A drink is portioned before you open it, which is not true of most other ways people use hemp. You are not estimating anything.

Reading the label

Four things are worth checking, and all four are either on the package or in the lab report:

• The THC number in milligrams, and whether that is per can or per serving. Some larger cans are two servings and the front of the label shows the smaller number.
• Whether CBD is in there too, and at what ratio.
• Carbonated or still. Not everyone wants a seltzer.
• Who tested it, and when. A lab report from eighteen months ago is not telling you about the can in your hand.

Every beverage on our shelf has a Certificate of Analysis from a third-party lab, and you can read the COA before you buy. If a brand will not show you one, that is worth noticing.

How they differ from edibles

The obvious difference is that you drink one. The practical difference is the dose range. Most of the edibles we stock start higher per piece than most of the beverages do, which is part of why the drinks cooler attracts a different customer. A 2mg seltzer and a 10mg gummy are not the same kind of purchase.

The other difference is social. A can looks like a can. People who would not open a tin of gummies in front of their neighbours will happily hold a seltzer at a barbecue.

What we stock, and why

We carry brands we have actually tried, which is a lower bar than it sounds but still rules out more than you would expect. Cycling Frog and Indigo have been on the shelf the longest. We turn away more beverage lines than we take, and the usual reason is lab results that move around between batches. If the numbers are not consistent, the printed dose is not meaningful.

You can see the current list on the THC drinks and beverages page, and it changes as things come and go.

Where to get them

All three of our shops carry beverages: Castle St, Market St, and Leland. The staff at any of them can tell you what is in the cooler today and what the lab found. Our locations page has hours and directions.

If you are not in Wilmington, we ship anywhere in North Carolina. Orders go out the same day you place them and most addresses get them in one to three days. Shipping is free over $100 and $8 flat below that. There is more detail on the statewide shipping page, including the handful of states we cannot ship to.

Everything is 21 and over, in the shop and online, with a valid government-issued ID every time.