Celebrity Weed Strains: Who Actually Earned the Honor?

Here is the funniest fact in the celebrity cannabis business. The most famous weed smoker alive sells the least weed.

Wiz Khalifa's Khalifa Kush brought in $55 to $65 million in 2025. Snoop Dogg's Death Row Cannabis brought in just $1 to $3 million.

That ranked Snoop's brand dead last, at #20 on the year's top 20 list.

Fame does not equal flower

A gap of roughly $57 million separates the two. One named his mixtape Kush & Orange Juice. The other reportedly employs a full-time joint roller. Guess which is winning.

So the question writes itself. When a celebrity slaps their name on a jar of cannabis, do they actually deserve the honor? The sales data has opinions.

Snoop is arguably the most culturally important cannabis figure on Earth. He has launched at least five separate cannabis ventures since 2013. He opened branded dispensaries on two continents in 2024.

And his weed brand finished last.

This is the central joke of the whole industry. A famous name buys you attention for about a week. After that, people just want to know if the product is any good.

Wiz Khalifa understood this. He built a career on cannabis since 2010 and put out a product people re-buy. That is why Khalifa Kush topped the list for the second year running.

The $50 joint nobody wanted

Then there is Jay-Z, who decided cannabis needed a luxury tier.

In 2020 he launched Monogram, hand-rolled joints that sold for $50 each. The average California joint costs about $5. So this was a 10x markup on the privilege of holding a Jay-Z product between your fingers.

The parent company, TPCO Holding Corp, started with $575 million in capital and projected $334 million in first-year revenue.

It posted a net loss of roughly $587 million by 2022.

By late 2024, none of Monogram's listed partner dispensaries in California or Arizona actually stocked it. Jay-Z had stepped away around December 2022. A source told TMZ: "Jay-Z stepped away years ago and it just went up in a mess."

The consumer verdict was less poetic. Multiple outlets reported Monogram was accused of selling overpriced mid. A $50 joint that tastes like a $5 joint is a hard sell, even with a Brooklyn legend's name on it.

The dead outsell the living

Here is where it gets weird. Jerry Garcia died in 1995.

His estate launched Garcia Hand Picked in 2020. In 2025 it was the #3 celebrity cannabis brand with $25 to $35 million in sales. It also carries the highest average item price of any celebrity brand tracked, around $28 a unit.

So a man gone for three decades moves more product than Snoop Dogg, who is very much alive and allegedly smoking 150 joints a day.

The lesson of the celebrity cannabis era, apparently: it helps to be a beloved icon, and it does not strictly require a pulse.

The strains nobody asked permission for

Long before celebrities ran businesses, anonymous growers borrowed famous names for fun.

The indica Purple Urkle appeared in 1980s Northern California, named after Steve Urkel from Family Matters. Nobody asked Jaleel White. He found out the way the rest of us do, by living in the world.

Decades later, White leaned in. In 2021 he partnered with extractor 710 Labs to launch ItsPurpl. The deal happened because White and the company's founder, Brad Melshenker, met by chance on a plane.

"We were never a brand that pursued celebrity deals, in fact we turned a few away... But after meeting Jaleel serendipitously on an airplane and becoming friends, the idea grew organically," Melshenker said.

Urkel went from unwilling strain mascot to actual cannabis entrepreneur. The other unauthorized tributes never cashed in: Obama Kush, Charlie Sheen OG, Michael Phelps OG (named for the 2009 bong photo), and Bruce Banner, named for being strong enough to turn anyone green.

When the lawyers showed up

Borrowing names is a great way to get a letter from a law firm.

The Girl Scouts sent cease-and-desist notices over the strain Girl Scout Cookies, which is why everyone now politely calls it GSC. Gorilla Glue the adhesive company sued in 2017, and the strain became GG4. Skittles maker Mars-Wrigley forced Zkittlez to rebrand as Original Z in 2023.

There is a deeper catch. No cannabis brand can get a federal trademark at all, because marijuana is still a Schedule I substance. Over 16,000 cannabis trademark applications have piled up at the patent office, most of them refused.

That includes Snoop. In March 2026 the patent office rejected his attempt to trademark "Smoke Weed Everyday", ruling the phrase had become too common to belong to anyone.

The honor roll

Some celebrities clearly earned it. Mike Tyson turned the most infamous moment of his career into Mike Bites, ear-shaped gummies with a chunk missing. Two New York dispensaries reportedly sold over $40,000 worth in hours at launch.

Damian Marley grows his Evidence brand inside a converted California prison, packaging products like police evidence bags and donating $1 per sale to The Last Prisoner Project. Ric Flair launched Ric Flair Drip, which of course costs more than average weed. Because of course it does. Wooo.

The verdict on who deserves the honor is simpler than the marketing suggests. A famous name gets you on the shelf. Whether you stay there depends on whether the cannabis is good, and whether you keep showing up. Fame is a coupon, not a guarantee. Wiz Khalifa cashed it. Jay-Z lost the receipt.