Are Craft Beer Drinkers And Pot Users All That Different?

Today is 4/20 Day, an unofficial celebration of cannabis and pot culture. And we have ask if this day is all that different from something like National Beer Day which many of us celebrated on April 7^th?

The short answer is that in many ways, it isn’t.

American Craft Beer knows many in the craft beer industry who are regular pot users. They may not champion pot like they do craft beer – but there’s many brewers we know who’ll admit to smoking weed daily.

Clearly marijuana is becoming increasing normalized both culturally and in legal terms…And with every year 4/20 Day is becoming less of an underground celebration and more an acknowledgement of this seemingly inevitable progression.

So maybe it’s time that we all get more honest about the primary reason that people drink alcohol and/or smoke marijuana to begin with.

In both cases that reason is mood enhancement…

And pehaps it’s just another remnant of the Prohibition era that this reality is played down in the drinks biz (like we’re ashamed of the truth).

But please, would drinking alcohol really enjoy the popularity that it does today if it didn’t deliver a high that a great many found pleasurable?

And we get that drinking also involves the additional experience of taste – a sensation and pleasure derived from flavor. But when was the last time you heard someone rave about delicious flavor of a “non-alcoholic” beer?

Unlike societal drinking, marijuana has less cultural pleasantries it can hide behind. With marijuana the truth is undeniably in your face…its entire point is to get you high. But the truth is people drink alcohol for the very same reason.

And the fact that that mood enhancement might play out differently with alcohol than it does with marijuana is really more a question of a personal preference than it is one of intention.

Yes, there are craft beer drinkers that have no space for pot users – and vice versa.

There are also many who argue that pot is less hard on one’s heath than alcohol…and increasingly it’s getting harder to not see some truth to that.

Others see drinking as a tamer approach to mood enhancement, especially when compared to the super-potent forms of pot being produced today, (and there’s some truth to that too).

But not to acknowledge that alcohol and marijuana are both drug experiences, that they answer the same directive, mood enhancement, is just not being honest.

And do you really think it’s a coincidence that the hops and marijuana buds have been found to share such similar genetic families?

We don’t.

Happy 4/20 Day…

(Pot Beer Image Credit: Mitchell Maglio)