THC Drinks at Target, Dab Rig Popcorn Buckets, and the Race to Normalize Cannabis

THC Drinks at Target, Dab Rig Popcorn Buckets, and the Race to Normalize Cannabis

There are two ways to know that cannabis has gone fully mainstream. One is when the federal government reschedules it. The other is when you can buy a THC seltzer at Target while picking up toilet paper — in Texas.

That second milestone quietly arrived this month. Target expanded hemp-derived THC beverage sales to more than 300 stores across Illinois, Florida, and Texas, building on a pilot program the retailer initially launched in Minnesota. The selection has grown beyond the original 5mg-THC products to include 10mg varieties, and Target's strategic choice of three of the most populous states in the country is no accident. Texas, Florida, and Illinois collectively represent a consumer base of roughly 65 million adults. To be selling THC products at Target in all three simultaneously is, practically speaking, the closest the cannabis industry has come to a mainstream retail moment — at least for the hemp-derived side of the market.

The product category driving this is cannabis beverages, and the growth numbers are hard to argue with. BDSA data shows THC drink sales grew 15% in 2025 to $54.6 million, and the market shows no signs of slowing. A study published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs found that adults who switched to THC-infused beverages reduced their weekly alcoholic drinks from 7 to 3.35, with 58.6% of cannabis beverage users explicitly saying they were using the drinks as an alcohol substitute. The low-dose segment — products containing 5mg of THC or less per serving — is growing at a compound annual rate of 33.7%. The consumer who is buying a THC seltzer instead of a light beer at dinner is not the traditional cannabis consumer profile, and brands are clearly pursuing that crossover aggressively.

The Edible Brands ecosystem — parent company of the iconic Edible Arrangements — has been building toward a similar mainstream moment through its e-commerce platform Edibles.com, which now reaches more than 65% of the U.S. population through direct shipping and same-day local delivery. The platform carries brands including Cann, Wana, Cantrip, and 1906, and its first physical flagship retail location opened in Atlanta's Inman Park neighborhood in April. The physical store strategy makes explicit what the e-commerce expansion implies: hemp-derived THC products are being positioned as a wellness category, not a vice — the same shelf logic that drove CBD into Sephora and Whole Foods, applied now to psychoactive doses.

And then there's the pop culture dimension, which this week took a genuinely surreal turn. As reported by The Marijuana Herald, the forthcoming Scary Movie revival unveiled a promotional dab rig-styled popcorn bucket — a full-scale nod to cannabis consumption culture, deployed in the marketing of a mainstream theatrical release. There is exactly one way to interpret a movie studio putting a dab rig in a multiplex concession stand: they know who their audience is, and they're not embarrassed about it. Cannabis imagery has moved from counter-culture to promotional merchandise, and that shift happens only when a brand's marketing team decides the association is more asset than liability.

Not all the product news this week pointed toward expansion. Illinois's 561-page cannabis omnibus bill would move intoxicating hemp products — which currently sit on convenience store shelves — into licensed cannabis dispensaries. That's a significant channel disruption for brands whose distribution strategy depends on general retail. And the looming federal hemp ban, set to take effect November 12, 2026, and capping legal THC content at 0.4 milligrams per container, threatens to effectively eliminate most of the hemp THC beverage category from the market unless Congress acts. The industry's federal window for hemp THC products is measured in months, not years — which makes Target's timing feel, depending on your perspective, either bold or bittersweet.

Georgia's Governor Brian Kemp signed Senate Bill 220 into law in mid-May, broadening the state's medical cannabis program to permit vaping and other alternative consumption formats and replacing a restrictive 5% THC cap with a 12,000-milligram THC possession limit. For Georgia's medical patients — who previously were limited to low-THC oils — the change is meaningful. For the broader market, it's another data point confirming what product category trends already show: consumers want formats that are discreet, precise, and socially portable. Flower remains the market's largest segment by volume, but the future is being built one beverage, gummy, and vape cartridge at a time.

The week's product landscape, taken together, reflects an industry at a peculiar crossroads: more mainstream than ever in some channels, more legally precarious than ever in others. The brands that will come out ahead are almost certainly those betting on the regulated dispensary market as the ultimate endpoint — regardless of how many steps the hemp market gets to take first.