Tilray Brands chairman and CEO Irwin Simon doesn’t believe the narrative that drinkers – including the youngest legal-drinking-age consumers – are giving up alcohol.
Simon shared several anecdotes informing his thinking during TD Cowen’s Future of the Consumer Conference earlier this week.
“I got four kids, and they’re all over 21, and I had 100 kids at my house for a party last week, and I didn’t see one of them walking around not with a drink in their hand,” Simon shared, adding that “to my dismay, they weren’t drinking non-alc.”
Simon also recalled going to dinner the night before with CFO Carl Merton.
“When I go to restaurants, I walk [by] every table to see who has a drink,” he said. “It was a Monday night, and everybody had a drink on their table. So it’s not dry Monday yet.”
Simon offered another anecdote that he smelled “a lot of cannabis” as he walked to the conference, “and I tell you what, people are drinking a lot of beer and alcohol.”
“So whoever says beer and alcohol are going away, it’s absolutely not,” he said.
Simon also shared comments on the potential of intoxicating hemp in the U.S. and a possible change in its federal legal status.
For 2026, Simon estimated that Tilray’s intoxicating hemp beverage business could be “in the millions of size,” which would be incremental to the company.
“[If] we could sell cannabis drinks in the U.S., it’s a billion-dollar-plus business,” Simon added. “In Canada today, we have about a 45% share of the Canadian market to about $25 to $30 million in Canada, and only can sell them in cannabis stores. Again, if we could sell them to restaurants, if we could sell the beer stores, it’s [a] $100-plus-million-dollar business.”
Tilray is lobbying for more states to allow intoxicating hemp beverages, Simon said.
“With regulatory, I hate making predictions, because I’ve been wrong all the time,” he added. “I thought today cannabis would be legal in the U.S. If I can keep these 13 states right now, I’ll be happy. And if I get any more, I’ll be real happy.”
For more on Tilray, including the company’s stock price, brewery closures, SKU rationalization and distributor consolidation, read the full story on Brewbound.