The drinks industry's weed reckoning inches closer

Plus: Tiny raises for Teamsters, big buybacks for Molson Coors' investors!

Cannabis—you heard of this stuff? People seem to like it. I’m coming across it more and more lately. Maybe something to keep an eye on?

Here’s something you can be sure trade types are keeping an eye on. Yesterday, NBCNews reported that the Biden administration was moving on its long-gestating plan to reclassify “that wacky tabacky” (their words) (not really) from Schedule I to III. The Feds currently have weed in a cohort with heroin and LSD, a deliberately racist categorization borne from the also-deliberately racist War on Drugs; this change would make it more akin to Tylenol with codeine.

The beverage-alcohol industry has anxiously pondered federal legalization of recreational cannabis for longer than I’ve been on this beat, and this is not that. Smoking a joint just to relax (as opposed to like, treating glaucoma, or whatever) would still be verboten in Dark Brandon’s (laser) eyes. But if rescheduling actually happens, it’d still be a hurdle cleared on the path to a national recreational-marijuana future. The drinks industry’s recreational weed reckoning draws ever closer!