Girl Scout Cookies: Thin Mints and cease-and-desist letters

Word on the street#

Everyone knows the joke. Girl Scout Cookies, usually shortened to GSC, is a strain named after the most famous cookie drive in America, and it is supposed to taste like one: sweet, minty, a bit of dessert in the jar. High Times' senior cultivation editor Danny Danko, quoted in a Munchies piece, says the name refers to buds that taste like Thin Mints [3]. It became one of the best-known names in the whole market.

The second half of the folklore is that the Girl Scouts found out and were not amused. That half is true, so this episode is about getting the details right. We also want to be fair, because the Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) is a youth charity protecting a name that funds its troops, not a villain in a cartoon.

What the record says#

In January 2017, GSUSA sent cease-and-desist letters to dispensaries in California. A local TV report on 28 Feb 2017 says the recipients removed the product, and quotes the Girl Scouts' statement describing "Girl Scout Cookies" as a registered trademark dating back to 1936 [1]. A California cannabis lawyer's blog post of 17 Jan 2017 describes one letter, to an Oakland dispensary, which removed and renamed its products and told suppliers to stop using the name [2].

Munchies quotes another letter, sent to a Los Angeles company and signed by GSUSA's chief licensing executive. In it GSUSA says it "has come to our attention" that the name was being used "to market a strain of marijuana", and that only GSUSA has the right to license, endorse or sponsor a product bearing the name. It also objects to use that implies the organisation endorses the use of its registered mark in connection with illegal drugs (our paraphrase) [3]. That recipient renamed its premium cut "Platinum Cookies". Munchies also reports that the US Patent and Trademark Office does not protect strain names [3]. The page is undated in its text, so we cite it without a month.

The letters did not come out of nowhere. On 30 September 2016, Oregon's liquor regulator passed a temporary rule on strain names, and Cannabis Business Times reported the list of "at least 14" suspect names with Girl Scout Cookies first [4]. The report says existing products would not face immediate enforcement. It does not say who chose the names, so we do not either. We make no legal call on any of it: we report what was sent and said.

Not everyone went quiet. One Nevada dispensary quoted by the TV station swapped "Girl" for "Gurl" in its menu spelling, and its executive said patients recognise the strain by name [1]. A Girl Scout parent in the same report said booth visitors had asked whether the troop had "the other kind" of cookies, which she found inappropriate [1]. Both are fair points. A name is how a customer finds a strain, and it is also how a charity is found.

When did it even start?#

Here the sources disagree, and we would rather tell you than pick a winner. GreenState says the strain was released by a San Francisco rapper and his partner in 2010 [5]. Cannigma says it "hit the scene around 2012" and credits Northern California breeders [6]. Another popular guide gives both "the early 2000s" and "around 2009" on the same page, so we leave it out. Strain origins are like the date of a family recipe: everybody remembers who made it first a little differently, and the people who know are not always telling.

That is even true of the parents. Munchies quotes Danko for the cross: Durban Poison, OG Kush and an undisclosed third variety [3]. Cannigma describes Durban Poison with OG Kush as the most commonly told story, and passes on a claim that such stories were put out "to keep people from trying to copy" the strain [6]. In other words, two parents are widely stated, one is a secret, and the breeders themselves have said the story may be part of the marketing. Good reason to test it rather than recite it.

What the plant says#

Now the plant. CannaLib has a dossier on Girl Scout Cookies, frozen on 29 Sep 2026 [7]. It holds 1,947 flower lab tests of lots sold under the name. The median is 19.2% THC, and the typical range (10th to 90th percentile) runs from 5.9% to 24.9%. That is a wide spread. It is a count of lots sold as the name, and it cannot tell us whether they are one plant. The most-agreed seller or breeder claim is 22% THC, backed by 7 independent sources, so the usual claim sits above what the middle lab result shows [7].

On chemistry, the dossier lists the leading terpenes, by stated value, as β-caryophyllene, α-humulene, limonene, β-myrcene, linalool and trans-nerolidol. CBD runs from 0 to 0.3% across 1,575 samples [7]. A peppery, woody, citrusy list is not a mint list, so Danko's Thin Mints comparison is about the smell people describe, not something we can read off a terpene table.

On family, the page records 14 parents, each with a single source. The list includes Durban Poison and OG Kush in several spellings, and also Afghani, Green Crack and Skunk [7]. That is a handful of stories, not agreement, and it matches the pattern above: two widely stated parents, a secret third, and a tangle of retellings. The page also records 787 descendants, so whatever the plant is, it has been widely used in crosses.

On awards, CannaLib lists 23 cup placings between 2012 and 2025, of which 10 are verified against published results. They include High Times US Cannabis Cup placings in 2013 and 2014 and the 2025 Highlife Cup, 2nd [7]. Unverified entries stay labelled as such. As for the name itself, the page logs 20 aliases. Nearly all are the same name with a seller's name in front, so they tell us who lists it, not that the plant differs [7].

What is still ahead is the DNA check, an upcoming release: whether samples sold as Girl Scout Cookies in the public panel (ENA PRJEB49958) measure as one plant, and how they sit against samples sold as Durban Poison and OG Kush. A true parent should sit near a kinship of 0.25, and anything under 0.125 does not fit. Kinship is a family-resemblance meter: 0 is strangers, about 0.5 is the same plant twice. We have no kinship numbers yet, and none appear here. If the DNA later shows several plants behind the name, that is the usual pattern we report in One plant, fifty names. For how we weigh a famous name against the evidence, see The Hulk That Wasn't.

So what is Girl Scout Cookies?#

A well-documented name and a partly documented plant. The name is a real, dated story: a strain called after a famous cookie, a charity that said the name belongs to it, a regulator list, and at least one product renamed Platinum Cookies. The plant, on the lab record, is a widely tested flower with a median of 19.2% THC and a wide spread, with parents that depend on who you ask. Whether it is one plant is the DNA question, and we will update this article when that release is out. The full record is on the Girl Scout Cookies page.

Part of the lesson is how names behave. Names get renamed on demand, copied, shortened and respelled, which is why a label alone rarely tells you the whole story. For the other episodes in this series, start at Lineage Under the Limelight.