California dispensaries may soon carry marijuana soft drinks

Tuesday, January 25, 2011 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: marijuana, soft drinks, health news

(NaturalNews) California entrepreneur Clay Butler has developed a lineup of marijuana soft drinks that he says will be "a hit" once they are made available at marijuana dispensaries in the Golden State. California state laws permit marijuana use for medical purposes, and Butler sees the hundreds of medical marijuana "dispensaries" that distribute marijuana products to patients with prescriptions, as a goldmine.

Butler had previously developed a marijuana cola drink called Canna Cola that did fairly well, but he now plans to unveil a full lineup that includes Doc Weed, a Dr. Pepper-like drink, lemon-lime Sour Diesel, Grape Ape, and Orange Kush. Each 12-ounce bottle is expected to cost between $10 and $15 and contain between 25 and 65 milligrams of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

Marijuana-spiked beverages are nothing new, but they are also not necessarily all that popular. Butler hopes to change that with creative new flavors, savvy branding, and effective marketing. He also hopes to break the mold of poorly-labeled, gaudily-colored marijuana products that are all-too-commonly available, and replace them with his own line of more professionally-branded beverages.

"You look at all the marijuana products out there, and they are so mom-and-pop, hippie-dippy and rinky-dink," he said to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, a newspaper near his hometown of Soquel. "If someone can put every color of the rainbow on it, they do. If they pick the most inappropriate and unreadable fonts, they will. And there's marijuana leaves on everything. It's a horrible cliche in the industry."

And oddly enough, Butler himself says he has never even consumed alcohol, let alone anything marijuana-related.

"Even though, personally, I'm not interested and I don't think it's right for me, I'm a firm believer that adults have an inalienable right to think, eat, smoke, drink, ingest, decorate, dress any way they choose to do so. It's your life; it's your body."

Sources for this story include:

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/business/ci...

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/01/24/ent...