Up in Smoke: How 4/20 came to be the day that celebrates weed

People seem to be leaning towards the cloud of smoke as marijuana becomes more and more accepted and legalised in the US. Today, 20 April marks marijuana culture’s high holiday, 4/20.

On the haziest day of the year, college students congregate on campus quads at 4:20 pm, and cannabis stores in states where marijuana is legal offer discounts to their customers.

With recreational marijuana now legal in almost half of the states and the federal capital, this year’s event gives advocates a chance to evaluate how far the movement has come. Numerous states have implemented “social equity” initiatives to assist communities of colour, who have been most negatively impacted by the drug war, in benefiting financially from legalisation.

And the White House has shown an openness to marijuana reform.

Here’s a look at 4/20’s history:

The origin

Both the date and the word “420” have hazy beginnings.

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According to some, it was inspired by Bob Dylan’s song “Rainy Day Women No. 12 and 35,” which has the refrain “Everybody must get stoned” (420 is the product of 12 times 35). Others said it refers to a police code of marijuana possession.

But, the most widely accepted theory dates back to the 1970s and involves a group of bell-bottomed friends from San Rafael High School in Marin County, California, which is north of San Francisco. They went by the nickname “the Waldos.”

According to The Associated Press report, a friend’s brother produced a map and allowed the teenagers to harvest the cannabis patch because he was worried about being caught. The teens were growing the plant in the woods at neighbouring Point Reyes.

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The group would get together outside the school’s statue of chemist Louis Pasteur at 4:20 pm in the fall of 1971, just after football practice and classes, smoke a joint and go in quest of the marijuana patch. Their own language, “420 Louie” and then simply “420,” would take on a life of its own even though they never did discover it.

The Waldos kept postmarked letters and other artefacts from the 1970s that referenced “420,” which they currently store in a bank vault. Some of those documents were mentioned as the earliest known usage of the phrase when it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017.

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Popularisation

Phil Lesh, the bassist for the Grateful Dead, once acknowledged in an interview with the HuffPost that he was close friends with the brother of one of the Waldos. The lingo proliferated as the Waldos started to hang around in the band’s circle.

In the early 1990s, while attending a Dead gig, reporter Steve Bloom of the cannabis publication High Times got a flyer inviting people to “meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais.” It was published in High Times.

“It’s a phenomenon,” one of the Waldos, Steve Capper, now 69, once told AP. “Most things die within a couple years, but this just goes on and on. It’s not like someday somebody’s going to say, ‘OK, Cannabis New Year’s is on 23 June now.’”

While the Waldos came up with the term, the people who made the flier distributed at the Dead show — and effectively turned 4/20 into a holiday — remain unknown.

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Celebration

The day is celebrated with weed, naturally.

Some celebrations are bigger than others.

The Mile High 420 Festival in Denver, for example, typically draws thousands and describes itself as the largest free 4/20 event in the world.

Hippie Hill in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park has also attracted massive crowds, but the gathering was cancelled this year, with organizers citing a lack of financial sponsorship and city budget cuts.

College quads and statehouse lawns are also known for drawing 4/20 celebrations, with the University of Colorado Boulder historically among the largest, though not so much since administrators banned the annual smoke out over a decade ago.

Some breweries make beers that are 420-themed, but not laced, including SweetWater Brewing in Atlanta, which is throwing a 420 music festival this weekend and whose founders 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 term’s coiners. That’s where the Waldos will be this Saturday to sample the beer, for which they picked out “hops that smell and taste like the dankest marijuana,” one Waldo, Dave Reddix, said via email.

4/20 has also become a big industry event, with vendors gathering to try each other’s wares.

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The politics

The number of states allowing recreational marijuana has grown to 24 after recent legalization campaigns succeeded in Ohio, Minnesota and Delaware. Fourteen more states allow it for medical purposes, including Kentucky, where medical marijuana legislation that passed last year will take effect in 2025.

Additional states permit only products with low THC, marijuana’s main psychoactive ingredient, for certain medical conditions.

But marijuana is still illegal under federal law. It is listed with drugs such as heroin under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, meaning it has no federally accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

Still, the Biden administration has moved in the direction of legalising marijuana.

Thousands of persons convicted of “simple possession” on federal land and in the District of Columbia have received pardons from the president.

Last year, the Drug Enforcement Administration received a recommendation from the Department of Health and Human Services to reclassify marijuana as Schedule III, which would validate its legal use for medical purposes under federal law.

According to a Gallup poll last fall, 70 per cent of adults support legalisation, the highest level yet recorded by the polling firm and more than double the roughly 30 per cent who backed it in 2000.

Vivian McPeak, who helped found Seattle’s Hempfest more than three decades ago, reflected on the extent to which the marijuana industry has evolved during his lifetime.

“It’s surreal to drive by stores that are selling cannabis,” he said, adding, “A lot of people laughed at us, saying, ‘This will never happen.’”

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‘The mixed bag’

McPeak described 4/20 these days as a “mixed bag.”

Despite the legalisation movement’s progress, many smaller growers are struggling to compete against large producers, he said, and many Americans are still behind bars for weed convictions.

“We can celebrate the victories that we’ve had, and we can also strategise and organise to further the cause,” he said. “Despite the kind of complacency that some people might feel, we still got work to do. We’ve got to keep earning that shoe leather until we get everybody out of jails and prisons.”

For the Waldos, 4/20 signifies above all else a good time.

“We’re not political. We’re jokesters,” Capper has said. “But there was a time that we can’t forget, when it was secret, furtive. … The energy of the time was more charged, more exciting in a certain way.

“I’m not saying that’s all good — it’s not good they were putting people in jail,” he continued. “You wouldn’t want to go back there.”

With inputs from AP