"Beer Industry Could Lose $2 Billion from Legal Marijuana..."

The beer industry has positioned itself as “American as Apple Pie”. After all, Budweiser was renamed “America” for the summer of 2016 through the presidential election.

By claiming to be the equivalent to America itself, the beer industry can now defend itself against any outside aggressor – including cannabis. And to beer, cannabis is the ultimate “outside aggressor” – you can tell because the headline says “Marijuana”

Conveniently, cannabis has been called marijuana or “marihuana” (note the “h” in the middle) by politicians since the 1930’s. Don’t believe us? As recently as December 2016, “[Drug Enforcement Administration] … drew attention for its use of the archaic spelling of “marihuana” — with an “H” instead of a “J.” The rule is entitled “Establishment of a New Code for Marihuana Extract,” and uses the H spelling throughout.”

The article continues: “In the early 20th century “marijuana” or “marihuana” were primarily colloquial terms borrowed from Mexican Spanish, as the Brookings Institution’s John Hudak explains in his book Marijuana: A Short History. “… after the Spanish-American War [in 1898],” Hudak writes, “American resentment toward Mexicans and Mexican immigrants exploded.” Authorities who wanted to prohibit use of the drug soon discovered that associating it with Mexican immigrants was an effective propaganda tool. The word marijuana – with both “H” and “J” variants – was “popularized in the United States during the 1930s by advocates of prohibition who sought to exploit prejudice against despised minority groups, especially Mexican immigrants,” explained journalist and medical marijuana advocate Martin Lee in his book Smoke Signals.

By the way, is beer really losing ground to cannabis? It appears not.

“In states where medical marijuana is legal, beer consumption was down 0.6% on average in the three years leading up to legalisation, but rose 0.1% in the three years after.

“One does not need to look far into popular culture to see that beer and weed cultures can be highly complementary,” said Bernstein. [ibid]

“So far the fears of declining beer drinkers may be just that: fear. In Colorado, 2016 taxes received by the state on alcohol sales actually increased between January and November. Beer tax receipts climbed 4.5%, spirits rose 4.0% and wine increased 3.3%. Tax receipts did decline in the months of April, July, September and October for each of the alcohol categories. It's possible that on certain occasions like 4/20 and the fourth of July, consumers switch to cannabis, but overall alcohol is thriving in Colorado.

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