Gorilla Glue #4: the 2012 accident and the 2017 lawsuit

Gorilla Glue #4, now GG4, is a THC-dominant cannabis strain bred around 2012 by GG Strains, a Las Vegas company, and spread as cuttings. Nothing establishes a genetic link between it and the hemp flowers sold under its name in Europe.

In France, cannabis is classified as a narcotic regardless of variety, and article R. 5132-86 of the public health code bans, among other things, its production, possession, offer, transfer, acquisition and use. The order of 30 December 2021 authorises, by way of exemption, only varieties of Cannabis sativa L. listed in the EU or French catalogues whose Δ⁹-THC content is 0.30% at most. As a THC-dominant cultivar, GG4 falls outside this exemption: growing it, possessing it and selling it come under the narcotics regime. For questions about cannabis or its risks, Drogues Info Service, the French drug information line, answers free of charge and anonymously on 0 800 23 13 13.

Gorilla Glue #4 was produced by GG Strains, a company based in Las Vegas, Nevada. The complaint filed against it in 2017 says it was founded by two men calling themselves Josey Whales and Lone Watie, who present themselves as the strain's original breeders. According to the same document, they entered it in competitions and handed out hundreds of cuts to growers.

The origin story is brief. A Boulder Weekly article from October 2017 says the strain appeared in 2012 from an "accidental liaison" between Chem's Sister, Sour Dubb and Chocolate Diesel plants. The number designates a phenotype, that is, one plant picked from that offspring; GG Strains also sold Gorilla Glue #1 and #5. According to the company, GG4 was the first of its selections released to the public, while GG1 (Sister Glue) and GG5 (New Glue) only came out in winter 2016, in limited release.

The complaint takes the anecdote behind the name from an interview the breeder gave. After trimming the flowers, Josey Whales is said to have found his phone stuck to his hand and told the person on the line that the plant made him "stick to things like Gorilla Glue", an American brand of glue. The complaint places this choice in the western United States "in the early or mid-2010s"; the 2012 date comes from the press. The Boulder Weekly also credits the strain with several Cannabis Cups within a few years, and the two wins that could be dated are set out below.

The glue maker objected. On 24 March 2017, The Gorilla Glue Company, an Ohio business, sued GG Strains in the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, case no. 1:17-cv-00193 (case docket). The complaint alleges trademark infringement, trademark dilution, unfair competition and cybersquatting, meaning the abusive use of a domain name.

Its main argument is commercial. The complaint says consumers link "sticky" resin with high-quality cannabis and that GG Strains picked the name to profit from the glue's fame. GG Strains denied these claims. According to the Boulder Weekly, it argued that the two brands could coexist, and on 22 May 2017 it asked the court to dismiss the complaint for lack of jurisdiction and improper venue, or else to transfer the case to another court.

What did the settlement that ended the lawsuit provide in 2017?

The dispute ended with a consent order and permanent injunction, signed on 21 September 2017 by Judge Michael R. Barrett and entered the next day. Without admitting any wrongdoing, GG Strains gave up the word "Gorilla" in the United States and undertook to assign its rights in the names Gorilla Glue #1, #4 and #5 to the glue maker on 1 January 2020.

The order also binds the growers and dispensaries licensed by GG Strains, with an exception where a state's regulations forbid renaming a plant already registered under the old name. GG Strains had in fact registered "Gorilla Glue #4" as a trademark in Colorado (§ 15). The bans on using the name are limited to the United States: the recognition of the glue maker's marks, the dropping of the word "Gorilla" and the ban on licensees apply "in the United States" (§ 18 (a), (d) and (g)). The order does not mention the name GG4. According to the Boulder Weekly, the settlement renamed the strains GG4, GG1 and GG5. On its Leafly page, GG Strains now presents GG4 as Original Glue.

The original name survived all the same. It still appears on CBD flowers sold in Europe. The order's bans do not cover that market, but the 2017 complaint stated that the glue maker also had trademarks registered outside the United States, including in the European Union (§ 27).

The resin of Gorilla Glue comes from its trichomes, the tiny glands that cover the female flowers. As a study published in 2020 in Scientific Reports notes, cannabinoids and terpenes are produced and stored there. A plant thick with trichomes gives plenty of material for extracts and hash, which appeals to growers and resin makers alike. Our article on trichomes explains their role in the plant.

Distribution did the rest, with hundreds of cuts given away, competition awards and a name that is easy to remember. Other widely grown strains have followed this path, as OG Kush did, and its name also travelled far beyond the original plant.

Which competitions did Gorilla Glue win?

Two wins are documented in 2014: the hybrid category of the Los Angeles Cannabis Cup in February, then that of the Michigan Medical Cannabis Cup in July. In both cases, the results name the business that had entered the plant: Standard Seed Collective, then Herbal Solutions.

GG Strains also claims a first place at the World Cup held by High Times in Jamaica in 2015. The organiser's results page, dated 15 November 2015 and consulted in its archived copy, only covers the Jamaican Cup categories (indica, sativa, hash, farming and people's choice) and does not mention Gorilla Glue. With no other source from the organiser, this win remains unverified. These awards helped the name to travel; they say nothing about the plant sold under that name today.

Ten samples of Gorilla Glue #4 analysed in California between 2015 and 2016 had beta-caryophyllene as their main terpene, followed by limonene and myrcene in similar amounts. That profile applies to those batches; it guarantees nothing about a flower sold under the name today.

The data come from a study by Justin Fischedick, published in 2017 in Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research. A Californian laboratory quantified the terpenes of 233 samples of 30 high-THC strains, all submitted by the same medical dispensary in Hayward between February 2015 and February 2016. Each sample carried the name the dispensary gave it, and the batches generally came from several producers. For Gorilla Glue #4, the means of the ten samples are as follows.

Our article on CBD terpenes explains how to convert between units: 7.8 mg per gram is 0.78% of the flower's weight. In the study's classification, Gorilla Glue #4 belongs to the group dominated by beta-caryophyllene, alongside the strains of the Cookies family, including Girl Scout Cookies. It nonetheless forms its own class, named "Glue" and shared with Super Glue: after beta-caryophyllene come limonene and myrcene in a ratio close to 1 to 1, whereas the Cookies pair limonene with humulene instead.

Tasting descriptions are another matter. GG Strains advertises an earthy, piney and chocolate aroma and a "chemmy" taste reminiscent of diesel. For such "gas" or diesel notes, a study published in 2023 in ACS Omega points to a family of sulphur compounds that the plant makes in small amounts, rather than to terpenes. Its authors describe the expected smell of a Gorilla Glue as pungent, sulphurous and spicy.

An Italian hemp "Gorilla Glue", presented below, has also been analysed. The two profiles share one feature, caryophyllene in first place, but they were not quantified in the same way:

The units differ from one column to the other: the whole flower on one side, the essential oil obtained by distillation on the other. The figures therefore cannot be compared with each other; only the order of the terpenes can.

The profile also changes over time. In Germany, a medical cannabis flower labelled "Gorilla Glue 4", stored for several months at room temperature in its original packaging and analysed after its expiry date, still had limonene among its dominant monoterpenes. Its monoterpene content had nonetheless fallen markedly, myrcene above all, while its sesquiterpenes still matched the manufacturer's specifications (Hundertmark et al., Drug Testing and Analysis, 2026).

The further a name travels, the less it tells you about what the bag contains. In a study published in 2019 in the Journal of Cannabis Research, researchers analysed the DNA of 122 samples of 30 strains bought from 20 dispensaries in three US states. They found significant genetic differences between samples sold under the same name.

The chemistry is no more reliable. After examining 89,923 samples tested in laboratories in six states, a team concluded in 2022 that commercial labels do not consistently match the measured composition in cannabinoids and terpenes. Neither study looked at Gorilla Glue as such.

One published case does concern it directly. In the 2023 ACS Omega study, a team of researchers compared cannabis extracts obtained from dispensaries in the Los Angeles area. The one sold as "Gorilla Glue" smelled of citrus and tangerine, a smell the authors attribute to thiols, which are sulphur compounds: 3-mercaptohexanol and two of its esters. Since Gorilla Glue is not known to smell that way, they judge the sample probably mislabelled and from a different strain.

The check described in the court record is genetic: according to the 2017 consent order, GG Strains then verified the authenticity of its partners' plants by genotyping. Without such a check, the name alone proves nothing about the plant.

According to its breeder, the original GG4 is only distributed as cuttings. A seed sold under this name therefore does not reproduce it: it grows into a genetically new plant. In France, hemp rules also ban taking cuttings and selling plants.

The 2017 complaint speaks of "hundreds" of cuttings handed out to growers, and GG Strains still presents GG4 as "clone only", available only as a cutting. A cutting is a piece of the mother plant, so it keeps the same genetic make-up. A seed, by contrast, comes from the fertilisation between two parents and mixes their genes, so two seeds from the same packet can grow into different plants.

In France, the order of 30 December 2021 requires hemp flowers and leaves to be produced from plants grown from certified seed. It bans the sale of plants and the practice of taking cuttings, and only active farmers may grow hemp flowers and leaves. On 29 December 2022 the Conseil d'État annulled only paragraph II of article 1 of that order, which banned the sale of raw flowers. On 26 March 2025 it rejected a request for repeal that challenged these three rules. A THC-dominant cultivar spread only as cuttings therefore has no place in the French hemp sector. The status of the seeds themselves and the penalties for growing are covered in our article on CBD seeds, and the history of the order in our feature on the 2021 ban and its annulment.

In Europe, the name appears on low-THC hemp. In 2022, an Italian team published in the journal Plants an analysis of nine commercial hemp varieties, including one sold as "Gorilla Glue". According to the authors, it derives, like the 24 K variety, from the industrial variety Carmagnola CS, so nothing suggests a family link with the American GG4.

Their results, obtained on flowers harvested in autumn 2020, describe a hemp rich in CBDA, whose terpene profile is detailed above:

(E)-caryophyllene is another name for beta-caryophyllene, a peppery terpene that our article on beta-caryophyllene covers in detail. The profile describes that plant and that batch; other flowers sold under the name may differ.

In France, a flower is legal when it comes from a variety listed in the EU or French catalogue and the finished product contains no more than 0.30% Δ⁹-THC. The Conseil d'État struck down on 29 December 2022 the ban on selling raw flowers. Our guide to the EU catalogue of hemp varieties explains why a flower's trade name often differs from its listed variety.

Phytogrammes sells no flower under this name. To compare CBD flowers, our checklist for choosing CBD on verifiable criteria starts from the batch and its variety, never from the name.

On a CBD flower, the name "Gorilla Glue" commits to neither genetics nor composition: only the certificate of analysis for the batch and the hemp variety of origin tell you anything. An addictovigilance study supported by MILDECA, the French interministerial drug agency, also found in 2023 that, among CBD products whose label stated a content, only 19% met it to within 20%.

The addictovigilance centres of Paris, Lyon and Montpellier and the toxicology laboratory of Lille University Hospital bought 223 CBD products in July 2022 and April 2023, 66% of them from online shops. Products for inhalation made up 85%: flowers, resins, pollens, vaping liquids. According to their summary note, 12.5% exceeded 0.3% Δ⁹-THC, with a maximum of 1.2%. Only one product in two displayed its composition, 69% contained less CBD than stated, and 5.4% contained HHC, Δ⁸-THC or H4-CBD that were not on the label. These figures apply to all the products studied, across every category, and the authors state that their panel is not representative of the market.

Faced with a flower sold under this name, these are the points to check:

• the batch number and the analysis date on the certificate, which must match the bag; our method for reading a certificate of analysis goes through each line;
• a Δ⁹-THC content of 0.30% at most, a threshold explained in our article on the legal THC level and checkable with our THC level checker;
• CBD and CBDA reported separately, since the flower mostly holds the acid form, as the Italian "Gorilla Glue" did (what certificates say about CBD content);
• a terpene profile if one is provided, bearing in mind that a missing terpene does not make a flower non-compliant;
• the hemp variety of origin, which must appear in the EU or French catalogues;
• drying and curing, which affect aroma and keeping (drying and curing);
• trichome coverage, visible with a magnifying glass;
• the age of the batch, since monoterpenes decline over time, as in the German sample cited above (reading the best-before date of a flower).

The same note points out that CBD is not pharmacologically inert: using it can cause drowsiness and reduced alertness, and taking it alongside medication calls for medical advice, since interactions have been described. The authors also propose that labels display a ban on use under 18 and during pregnancy or breastfeeding; these are proposals. No French text sets a legal age for CBD itself, but vaping products, CBD e-liquids included, may not be sold to minors. For a combination with a treatment, our interactions tool gives pointers; for driving, see our saliva test tool.