A potent, flavorful, paralytic new weed variety is bucking the collapse in the price of pot. It’s the Toad Venom strain, and it’s taken off over the last four years, thanks to drama-fueled online industry hype over its origin, who gets the credit for it, and the slew of alleged counterfeits circulating in the global weed market.
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Toad Venom’s rise to craft whiskey levels of demand and prices illustrates a potential path forward for impoverished weed growers: stimulate oversubscription for rare, original varietals—like the Cosmic Crisp apple. And stop racing to the bottom against the Budweisers of bud.
Here’s the news you can use: Toad Venom is on shelves at Green Dragon, a combination nursery, farm, and shop operating since 2007 in North Hollywood—at least for now, the company says. And it’s allegedly the real deal.
Green Dragon’s co-owner Glen S. told GreenState he’s growing about 750 pounds of ‘the Toad’ every three months, and he’s distributing it through KSS Distribution of Oakland, Calif., to about 100 legal stores in the state. (We’re withholding Glen S.’s full name because of de-banking issues amid ongoing federal prohibition, as well as personal and family safety issues associated with producing licensed cannabis in California.)
To our knowledge, there are no verified, authentic sources of Toad Venom cuttings currently available.
Rumors swirl that in the illicit market, pot labelled “Toad Venom” can fetch double or triple the cost per eighth-ounce of flower as any other bud: $120 to $150 per eighth.
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Glen S. told GreenState that he spotted offers for $4,000 to $10,000 per pound for Toad Venom in the East Coast illicit market. Claims of counterfeiting abound.
“It’s revalued weed in a way that weed has been devalued for so long. It’s opened me up to see that there are guys in their garages that are getting $5,000 per pound for their stuff, but they’re growing very specific things,” he said.
Glen S. sums up the wisdom of the saga with: “I’m hoping it starts to drive a line between mass commoditized, machine-trimmed weed, and the people that care for it. I hope that passion comes back.”
GreenState licks the Toad Venom
“I think I’m paralyzed,” said my fellow smoker, on a wicker patio seat in the backyard of a Hollywood Airbnb.
I had scored a big jar of Toad Venom from the KSS Distribution Trade Show in Oakland, on January 15, direct from Glen S.
One morning in my garage, when I opened up the jar, my partner told me, “It smells like a cat pissed in here.”
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So, of course, I brought some Toad down from San Francisco back to its home turf of Southern California, as the best weed in my roster to share with the other judges at the American Autoflower Cup, held January 27 through 31.
Smoking 75 strains over four days, it was easy to get lost in middling-tasting buds from a cheaper-to-grow pot known as ‘autoflower.’ So at the end of each day, I’d break out some Toad Venom and remind the judges what a potential 100-point out of 100-point herb could smell and taste like. It became the week’s reference point to prevent getting lost in the mids.
Toad Venom brings together the minty, cookie smell and taste of Sin City Seeds’ Sin Mint Cookies, the tropical lime candy taffy taste of Zkittlez, and the biting, gasoline fumes of the strain Animal Face. It’s an improvement on the dominant flavor of modern pot, Zkittlez, by adding more scrumptious cookie and biting gas. Its light and dark green, moderately sized nugs have a moderate density, which Glen S. calls “gooey” from the Zkittlez.
“It’s just a whole lot of cookie in there with that Z making it a little bit special. It comes in and gives you a little tang,” he said.
It’s not the biggest bud, or the blingiest bud, but looks do not equal taste or power.
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Glen S. recalls texting his team when they found her in 2021: “She does not check the boxes for looks or anything else, but, man, she’s smoking.”
“I wanted effect and taste. A lot of people go for one or the other,” Glen S. explained.
Everyone from around the circle in Hollywood agreed: Toad Venom smelled rowdy, had gobs of great taste, and got you so lit that a novice went numb and froze up for 30 minutes before his motor functions returned. A soaring euphoria accompanied the body effects. It didn’t feel racy like a one-dimensional sativa, or narcoleptic like a full-on indica. It’s a lip-smacking, powerful adjunct to a night off.
The herstory of the Toad Venom Strain
Cannabis history has shown that superb pot has a way of walking itself out of grow rooms.
Often, the plant enlists a confederate—an employee who will transport the new varietal to fresh pastures. You know you have a hit strain by the fact that it escapes. And so it did with Toad Venom.
Ronin Seeds of Los Angeles is often credited as the original breeder of the cross ‘Sin Mintz x Animal Face.’ That is: (Sin Mint Cookies x Zkittlez) x Animal Face from Seed Junky Genetics.
A go-between transported Ronin Seeds’ ‘Sin Mintz x Animal Face’ to Green Dragon in 2021.
Glen S. and his team germinated all 30 seeds and hunted for a winner. Only one of the 30 made the cut. Green Dragon dubbed her ‘Becky‚’ a slang term for an attractive young female from the San Fernando Valley.
“She was the true outlier in that bunch,” Glen S. recalled.
By 2022, Green Dragon began selling ‘Becky’ in marijuana packaging that featured a woman in a black, full-faced ski mask.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Glen S., Becky had allegedly escaped the facility with the go-between employee and arrived at Ronin Seeds’ Oklahoma grow in 2022.
“It was given to me with the name, ‘Becky,’” said Ronin Seeds’ Jake on the Mango After Hours podcast on February 13. (Only first names are used due to the ongoing illicit nature of breeding, growing, and selling marijuana.)
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According to Jake, in the interview dubbed The Truth About Toad Venom, another Ronin Seeds employee re-christened ‘Becky’ as ‘Toad Venom,’ alluding to its ‘sinful animal’ nature.
So was Toad Venom technically stolen—or was it a mere business dispute?
The Toad envenomates the world
What’s not in dispute is that Ronin Seeds and affiliated brands used their powerful playbook of social and street marketing to turn Toad Venom into a global phenomenon between 2022 and the present.
By 2024, I had heard about the strain as a mythical, whispered exclusive. At the Spannabis cannabis festival in Barcelona in 2024, I first saw the unique, iconic Toad Venom packaging before I saw the strain itself—a large, cartoon frog head-shaped bag.
A former venture capitalist, Ronin Seeds’ co-owner Jake, and associates specialize in creating hype around superb, closely held varieties. And hype drives up prices.
In 2025, there were reports of Toad Venom fetching $150 for 3.5 grams in Thailand. That is about three times as much as top-shelf in California.
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Glen S. told us he’s seen social media posts of buyers offering $4,000 to $10,000 per pound of Toad Venom on the East Coast. By contrast, a pound of California outdoor might fetch $400, one-tenth of Toad’s price.
“It’s been crazy. It’s non-stop, just getting bigger and bigger,” he said.
This winter, the San Diego, Calif. breeder Blockhead sold clones of Toad Venom at $5,000 per cutting.
The lesson: Drama sells
One key ingredient in Toad Venom’s rise: drama.
“There’s no better weed to smoke than drama weed,” said veteran Florida grower and podcaster Miami Mango on the aforementioned episode, quoting David Polley at Preferred Gardens in Sacramento, Calif.
The strain’s unclear provenance sparked intense online debates over its owner and lineage.
The Ronin Seeds team leveraged drama to generate attention, the currency of the 21st century, which translates into demand. Keep supplies low, drive up demand with marketing, and prices rise.
Jake said on the Mango After Hours podcast that he released what he described as “fake cuts” in Oklahoma during a business dispute, a move he framed as strategic marketing. The alleged counterfeits created even more controversy; Jake claimed a popular Toad Venom counterfeit is just a re-branded Detroit Runtz.
“When you see people say, ‘Oh, it’s not that good.’ Well, I think 95 percent of people haven’t actually smoked it. I’m not going to say it’s the best weed I’ve ever selected or grown, but it’s good, solid weed,” Glen S. said.
He added that since 2022, online groups have tried to claim ownership of the strain and discredit him and the Green Dragon team.
“The fact is that it was professionally hunted in a professional place by guys that have been doing it for 30 years,” Glen S. asserted.
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Archive Seed Bank brought the simmer to a boil in 2025 when they publicly pilloried groups taking credit for Green Dragon’s work.
Glen S. recalls Fletcher telling him: “These guys are totally bullsh**ing and they’re telling everybody this other sh**.”
The intrigue came to a head on the Mango After Hours, when Mango got Jake’s side of the story, and then brought out Glen S. as a surprise guest, like a spicy talk show.
Both Ronin Jake and Green Dragon Glen concur that Ronin bred, named, and marketed what became known as Toad Venom. But Green Dragon did the work to select the “keeper” and thus “owns” it, for lack of a better phrase.
Was it theft or mere miscommunication? Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan.
Glen S. alleged the plant left the grow without his authorization, telling GreenState, “I can say that it wasn’t allowed. They took it out [of the facility].”
Online debates continue to stoke disputes—keeping the drama-filled hype going to purportedly fuel profits in the trafficking of the strain.
For his part, Green Dragon Glen S. said he’s always sucked at marketing. Ronin Jake and his partners smashed it.
“They repped it well, it just wasn’t theirs to rep,” Glen S. claimed.
Glen S said he’s happy Team Ronin ran up hype for his work. “Am I mad that it got taken out? No.”
Beyond the dispute over how the cut left the facility, taking credit “made it weird.”
Ronin Jake empathized: “It hurts,” he said on the Mango After Hours podcast.
Jake added that cuttings are “open source code” that anyone can use. But credit for who made that bit of open source code is important.
The future is Toad
There’s a good chance Toad Venom can become the next foundational strain for marijuana breeding.
Think of the omicron variant of the coronavirus and how it crowded out nearly all less fit strains. Toad Venom has the potential to supplant the current dominance of its parent, Zkittlez, by adding this new twist to it.
Toad Venom is “a nice bridge,” between today’s consumer’s love of ‘candy’ and what comes next, said Glen S.
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Green Dragon is selling a Toad Burger (Toad Venom x Hashburger). And Glen S. is in the middle of crossing Toad Venom to much of his nursery library. He teased a Banana OG cross, a Sherbanger Z cross, and a Masonic Seed Co. Starburst F3 cross. Glen S. wants to get Toad Venom’s hash production numbers up, while taking it in a cookie, gassy direction, as opposed to candy.
For their part, Ronin Seeds touts Galaxy Toad, Lemon Venom, and hundreds of Toad Venoms inbred to themselves, called backcrosses.
Ronin Jake stated his goal on Mango After Hours: “keep varietal pricing high.”
“I really just hope I see this encouraging a lot of people to pop [seeds] right now,” Glen S. concluded.