The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend, Except When It Comes to Cannabinoids

Except this is cannabinoids, and logic is never the foundation. The deeper I dive, the clearer it becomes: logic doesn't work in this space.

You know what does? Power and influence. As Jim Higdon told us, power is the only language they know. It's the only way to communicate with the people who don't want this industry to succeed.

Gen Z is drinking less alcohol. When an entire generation of consumers replaces your product with something new — one that sits in a gray regulatory space — you don't rely on logic. You lean on power. You remind your congressional friends that the check for their next fundraiser is not happening, because business has been down for the last few years.

That's the only "logic" that seems to apply in the cannabinoid space.

And if you zoom out, it starts to feel like the Spider-Man meme — everyone pointing at each other, everyone disrupted by cannabinoids. Spirits, Alcohol, Pharma, Big Ag, Retail… all circling the same disruption.

Headline like this: "Whiskey woes: Is Kentucky's $9 billion bourbon industry on the rocks?"

So ask yourself: is every industry intentionally trying to slow-walk regulation just long enough to choke the space?

An almost $30 billion hemp industry paired with a $50 billion regulated cannabis industry (Statista) makes it clear: this disruption isn't disappearing.

So let's focus on the basics:

• It's happening.
• Cannabinoids are here to stay.

Eventually, someone with a logical brain will look at the numbers and admit: "We've been losing market share to cannabinoids and if you can't beat them, join them."

Alcohol distributors seem to realize this because hemp beverages in total and wine spritz is exploding. They certainly don't want this to stop.

And when that realization clicks for others, the playbook isn't complicated. If you want your empire to live for another hundred years, you use your resources, power, and influence to acquire a cannabinoid company. Or you strategically align and pour gasoline on it — manufacturing scale, global marketing budgets, distribution muscle — and watch it explode.

Maybe those conversations aren't popular in boardrooms right now. But someone, somewhere, is already asking when the time will be right.

And here's the kicker: this whole conversation circles back to logic. And since logic doesn't apply here, it's the same reason operators don't use sensors in their extraction process.

They guess. When you guess, you get inconsistent yields. And then the CFO is left wondering why the numbers don't add up like they used to.

So start using logic, stop guessing during extraction.