---
title: Legal Weed Is Hurting the Beer Business
description: The rising popularity of recreational marijuana in the states where it has been legalized is starting to hurt beer sales.
authors:
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published: '2016-12-06T20:08:37.000Z'
modified: '2024-04-17T04:45:48.000Z'
section: Lifestyle
tags:
  - Beer
  - legal marijuana
  - onetime
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![Marijuana Border Wars](https://img.money.com/2016/12/gettyimages-452772560.jpg)
*Legal marijuana is hurting sales in the beer industry.*

In states that have legalized recreational marijuana, more people are looking to take a bong hit than sip on a hoppy brew.

Research firm Cowen & Company analyzed the state of the beer industry in Colorado, Oregon and Washington—states where both [recreational weed](https://time.com/4548601/recreational-marijuana-canada-industry/) is legal and craft beer has become popular. In those states, beer markets have "collectively underperformed" over the last two years, trailing behind beer sales around the country, industry website [Brewbound reported](http://www.brewbound.com/news/report-beer-volumes-declining-markets-recreational-cannabis-legal).

“With all three of these states now having fully implemented a \[marijuana\] retail infrastructure, the underperformance of beer in these markets has worsened over the course of 2016,” the researchers wrote.

Domestic brewers like [Anheuser Busch-InBev](https://money.com/anheuser-busch-leffe-beer-lawsuit/) and MilllerCoors have seen the largest drops. Sales volume of premium brews like Coors Light and Bud Light dipped by 4.4%, while economy brews—the regular forms of mainstream beers like Budweiser or Coors—dipped by 2.4%.

[Craft beer](https://money.com/craft-beer-prices-crowdsource/) also took a hit: Though it continues to grow, smaller breweries aren't performing as well as their counterparts around the nation. Weed's popularity has also started to affect breweries' bottom lines: Individual yearly spending on legal weed has outpaced that of alcohol, a [survey found in July](https://money.com/legal-marijuana-spending-alcohol/?iid=sr-link1).

The shift is most prominent in Denver, where total beer volumes plummeted by 6.4%. The gravitation toward legal weed particularly noticeable in 18 to 25 year-olds, who are using more cannabis yet have also stopped drinking as much alcohol, according to government data.

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