- This Saturday marks marijuana culture’s high holiday of 4/20.
- The prevalent explanation for the origins of 4/20 is that it began in the 1970s in California with a group of friends who called themselves the ‘Waldos’.
- Today, recreational marijuana is legal in 24 states, and 14 other states allow it for medical purposes.
Seattle (AP) – Saturday Issue marijuana The culture’s high holiday, 4/20, is when college students gather — at 4:20 p.m. — in clouds of smoke on campus quads and pot shops in legal-weed states thank their customers with discounts.
This year’s edition offers activists an opportunity to reflect on how far their movement has come, with recreational pot now allowed in nearly half of the states and the nation’s capital. Many states have instituted “social equity” measures to help communities of color who have suffered the most from the drug war receive financial benefits from legalization. And this white House Has shown openness to marijuana reform.
Here’s a look at the history of 4/20:
Why 4/20?
The origins of the date, and the term “420” generally, were long unclear. Some claimed it referred to the police code for possessing or deriving marijuana. bob dylan’s “Rainy Day Women Nos. 12 and 35,” with its phrase “Everyone should get stoned” – 420 is the product of 12 times 35.
But the prevailing explanation is that it began in the 1970s with a group of bell-bottom friends from San Rafael High School in Marin County, California, north of San Francisco, who called themselves the “Waldos.” A friend’s brother was afraid of being caught for a patch of cannabis grown in the woods of nearby Point Reyes, so he drew a map and gave the teenagers permission to harvest the crop, the story goes.
During the fall of 1971, at 4:20 p.m., right after classes and soccer practice, the group would gather at the statue of school chemist Louis Pasteur, smoke and go in search of a patch of weed. He never found it, but his personal dictionary – “420 Louis” and later simply “420” – would take on a life of its own.
The Waldos saved postmarked letters and other artifacts from the 1970s referencing “420”, which they now keep in a bank vault, and when the Oxford English Dictionary added the word in 2017, it included some of those documents. Cited as the earliest recorded use.
A guest puffs on a marijuana cigarette at the Sensi Magazine party celebrating the 420 Holiday in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles on April 20, 2019. Marijuana supporters are preparing for Saturday, April 20, 2024. Known as 4/20, the marijuana high holidays are marked by large crowds gathering together in parks, festivals, and college campuses to smoke. This year, activists can reflect on how far the movement has come. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)
How did ‘420’ spread?
The brother of one of the Waldos was a close friend of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, as Lesh once confirmed in an interview with The Huffington Post, now HuffPost. Valdoz began circling the band and shouting abuse.
Fast forward to the early 1990s: Reporter Steve Bloom of the cannabis magazine High Times was at a Dead show when he was handed a flyer urging people to “420-ing in Marin for 4 “Meet on the 20th at 4:20.” County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mount Tamalpais.” High Times published this.
“It’s a phenomenon,” one of the Waldos, Steve Carper, now 69, once told the Associated Press. “Most things go away within a couple of years, but it’s ongoing. It’s not like someday someone will say, ‘Okay, Cannabis New Year’s is now June 23rd.'”
While the Waldos came up with the term, the people who distributed the flyer at Dead shows – and effectively turned 4/20 into a holiday – remain unidentified.
how is it celebrated?
With weed, naturally.
Some festivals are larger than others: the Mile High 420 Festival in Denver, for example, typically attracts thousands of people and bills itself as the world’s largest free 4/20 event. Hippie Hill in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park has also attracted huge crowds, but organizers canceled the gathering this year, citing a lack of financial sponsorship and city budget cuts.
College quads and statehouse lawns have also been known to hold 4/20 celebrations, with the University of Colorado Boulder historically being one of the largest, though not so many since administrators banned the annual smokeout a decade ago.
Some breweries make beers that are 420-themed but not laced, including Sweetwater Brewing in Atlanta, which is hosting a 420 music festival this weekend and whose founder went to the University of Colorado .
Lagunitas Brewing in Petaluma, California, releases its “Waldos Special Ale” every year on 4/20 in partnership with the guys who coined the term. A man named Waldo, Dave Reddix, said via email that he will be right here this Saturday to sample Waldo beer, for which he chose “hops that smell and taste like the most dangerous marijuana.”
4/20 has also become a major industry event, with vendors gathering to try each other’s wares.
Politics
The number of states allowing recreational marijuana has grown to 24 after recent successful legalization campaigns in Ohio, Minnesota and Delaware. Fourteen more states allow it for medical purposes, including Kentucky, where a medical marijuana law passed last year will take effect in 2025. Additional states allow only products with less THC, marijuana’s main psychoactive component, for certain medical conditions.
But marijuana is still illegal under federal law. It is listed with drugs like heroin under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, meaning it has no federally accepted medical uses and has a high potential for abuse.
However, the Biden administration has taken some steps toward marijuana reform. The President has pardoned thousands of people who were convicted of “simple possession” of federal lands and the District of Columbia.
The Department of Health and Human Services last year recommended to the Drug Enforcement Administration that marijuana be reclassified as Schedule III, which would confirm its medical use under federal law.
According to a Gallup poll last fall, 70% of adults support legalization, the highest level ever recorded by the polling firm and more than double the roughly 30% who supported it in 2000.
Vivian McPeek, who helped establish Seattle’s HempFest more than three decades ago, reflected on how far the marijuana industry has evolved during her lifetime.
“It’s unrealistic to drive near stores that sell marijuana,” he said. “A lot of people laughed at us, saying, ‘That would never happen.'”
What does it mean?
McPeek described 4/20 as a “mixed bag” these days. Despite the progress of the legalization movement, many small growers are struggling to compete against larger growers, he said, and many Americans are still behind bars for weed convictions.
“We can celebrate our victory and we can also strategize and organize to further this cause,” he said. “Despite the complacency that some people may feel, we still have work to do. We have to keep earning the shoestrings until we get everyone out of jails and prisons.”
For the Waldos, 4/20 is, above all, a symbol of good times.
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“We’re not political. We’re just having fun,” Carper said. “But there was a time that we can’t forget, when it was secret, secret… The energy at that time was more charged, more exciting in a certain way.
He added, “I’m not saying it’s all good – it’s not good that they’re putting people in jail.” “You won’t want to go back there.”
