Right this moment, voters in 5 states will decide whether or not or to not decriminalize marijuana use by adults age 21 and older. Thus far, 37 states and the District of Columbia have handed related legal guidelines.

The legalization pattern has had unintended results on the Woman Scouts, particularly Woman Scout cookies.

Woman Scouts and Marijuana?

Not phrases you typically see in shut proximity.

A curious Troop’s Personal badge from my assortment

The Woman Scout cookie program isn’t a fundraiser, in official Woman Scout supplies, however a approach to foster entrepreneurialism in younger girls. Forward of gross sales, troops set gross sales objectives, apply for cookie cubicles (often assigned by lottery), and create their very own decorations, slogans, and indicators.

As authorized marijuana dispensaries opened throughout the nation, a number of Woman Scouts did their analysis and noticed an untapped market.

In 2014, a San Francisco Woman Scout arrange a cookie each exterior a medical marijuana dispensary and did a booming enterprise. Pre-Covid, a Chicago troop used an analogous location. Final 12 months, the pot and cookies combo got here from Walled Lake, Michigan. Weekend cookie cubicles exterior the Greenhouse of Walled Lake institution offered greater than 1,000 packing containers.

When these information tales started to flow into, GSUSA stepped in. That they had no downside with the sales space areas. However promoting merchandise bearing the Woman Scout identify was one other matter.

We Don’t Like These Woman Scout Cookies

For a few years, “Woman Scout Cookie” has been a well-liked pressure of marijuana. As long as the botanical remained banned, Woman Scout officers selected to disregard the trademark infringement.

Any authorized motion to forestall use of the identify would solely give publicity to the offending product.

However with legalization, the difficulty needed to be addressed. The elevated entry to marijuana “edibles” crossed a line. Baked items are Woman Scout turf. GSUSA launched the next assertion in 2017: 

We have been not too long ago made conscious of native dispensaries utilizing the Woman Scouts trademarked identify, or a variation of our trademarked identify, to promote their merchandise. In January, dispensaries in California have been issued a stop and desist letter from Woman Scouts of the USA for trademark infringement and have eliminated the product in violation from their cabinets. “Woman Scout Cookies” is a registered trademark relationship again to 1936. Our well-known cookies are identified the world over for his or her scrumptious taste and we don’t want the general public to be confused by unauthorized merchandise within the market.

Medical Marijuana Inc.

Representatives of the marijuana trade weren’t alarmed by the cease-and-desist letters. “We knew it was coming,” admitted the chief director of the Magnolia Oakland dispensary.

We come from the develop room, not enterprise faculty. There’s a studying curve to enterprise practices and we have gotten extra refined these days, however it’s one thing individuals ought to’ve identified, there’s no excuse.

Debby Goldsberry, Govt Director, Magnolia Oakland Dispensary

This isn’t the primary time the Woman Scouts took motion relating to marijuana.

Woman Scouts Vote To not Decriminalize Marijuana

When the twenty sixth Modification to the US Structure, enacted in 1971, lowered the minimal voting age from 21 to 18, the Woman Scout program provided initiatives that will assist ladies to grow to be knowledgeable voters. One initiative convened fifty years in the past.

marijuana, Girl Scout History Project
Petticoats, Pot, Politics Patch

In 1972 the Woman Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital sponsored “Petticoats, Pot, and Politics,” a Wider Alternative (Vacation spot) for Senior Woman Scouts. 100 ladies aged 14-17 from throughout the nation joined 25 ladies from Nation’s Capital for 2 weeks of political debate at Trinity Faculty in Washington, DC.

The native delegates helped design this system, deciding on present points with explicit relevance for teenagers.  They handed a number of payments, together with one requiring intercourse schooling to be taught in class, however defeated a proposal to decriminalize marijuana, as a substitute calling for possession to be decreased from a felony to a misdemeanor.

marijuana, Girl Scout History Project
Convention chair Beaulah “Boo” Legislation meets Julie Nixon Eisenhower (Chief Journal, March 1973).
marijuana, Girl Scout History Project
From Chief Journal, March 1973

The expertise ended with a reception on the White Home attended by First Daughter Julie Nixon Eisenhower, who declared that she agreed with the ladies’ place on marijuana.

Woman Scouts–on the forefront of change.


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