One-hundred seventeen boxes in two hours. That’s how many Girl Scout cookies 13-year-old Danielle Lei sold outside the Green Cross medical marijuana dispensary in San Francisco, Calif., last Monday.
It’s a common sight this time of year to see young Girl Scouts with their trademark vests sitting behind booths outside stores and making the neighborhood rounds to sell the famous Thin Mints, Samoas, Tagalongs, and Trefoils. But this may be the first time anyone’s heard of a girl targeting medical marijuana users.
“It’s no secret that cannabis is a powerful appetite stimulant, so we knew this would be a very beneficial endeavour for the girls,” Holli Bert, a Green Cross staff member, said.
Danielle’s mother, Carol Lei, has had her two daughters set up their booths at various locations throughout San Francisco to teach them about different environments. She also told CBS station KPIX that the choice of sales location gave her an opportunity to discuss the topic of drugs with her daughter.
“I’m not condoning it, I’m not saying go out in the streets and take marijuana,” Carol Lei said. “It also adds a little bit of cool factor. I can be a cool parent for a little bit.”
The Girl Scouts of Northern California, Danielle Lei’s council, neither condoned nor disapproved of the decision.
“We respect that individual sales and booth decisions will vary for different families and within the context of their communities,” the council said. “The decision of the mom to allow her daughter to have a booth at this location is not intended to be an endorsement or statement of any kind.”
The Girl Scouts of Colorado, another council, quickly expressed its objection. Ironically, Colorado is one of the few states that allow for possession of small amounts of recreational marijuana.
“We recognize these are legitimate businesses, but we don’t feel they are an appropriate place for girls to be selling cookies in Colo…this includes bars, strip clubs, casinos, liquor stores or marijuana dispensaries,” the council wrote in a tweet on Feb. 21.
Lei and her mother planned on returning to the Green Cross to make more cookie sales today.
Lei and her mother, Carol, were certainly clever when deciding where to sell the cookies. When I was 13, I was lucky to sell 50 boxes after three weeks of going door-to-door, let alone 117 in two hours. But still, Girl Scout cookies have always been a big hit with people who aren’t stoned, be it for medical reasons or not. It’s best to keep the cookie campaign in front of the average supermarket so as not to expose young girls to such environments, and there’s nothing wrong with keeping talks about drug use inside the home.
