The History of 420
🍀 4/20 🌲 4:20 🌿 420 💨
Happy 4/20, Pot Luck pals! As you all know, today is the one and only day that stoners get high....jk. But, today is the day that a majority of people who want to enjoy, reform, and celebrate weed will be slightly more public about their consumption of it than on every other day of the year, which can help to further de-stigmatize it.
Hopefully you know this already, but 420 is a code to refer to marijuana consumption. Spread throughout the counterculture in the 80's and 90's, the well-documented and surprisingly boring history of the term involved five high school boys in San Rafael, California in the 1970's who used to get high at 4:20 after school, while they used a treasure map to search for a plot of cannabis plants left by a Coast Guardsman(?) that they...never found? Regardless, Steve, Dave, Jeffrey, Larry, and Mark continued to smoke weed at 4:20, and also were peripheral groupies of the Grateful Dead, so their code word spread widely after that through their fellow Deadheads and the culture magazine, High Times.
When the California senate passed their bill to regulate medical marijuana in 2003, it was given the name SB 420, which was the first institutionally-acknowledged use of the term. Now that weed is significantly less illegal, coded language isn't as necessary, but it's mostly used as a wink-and-nod amongst fellow people who sometimes get high. So mom - if you're looking at a rental property and it says "420-friendly," now you know what that means.
Another fun fact: 420 mile markers have been stolen so many times that in some places, like Colorado, they've been replaced with 419.99 markers.
Looking for ways to celebrate the high holiday?
A typical 4/20 in the USA since the 1990's has involved "smoke-in's" or gatherings of demonstrators lighting up in public spaces to demand reform and legalization. Now that we're getting closer to nationwide legalization, I see this public display of pot-adoration as a potential opportunity to put real, modern cannabis user-identities out in the public eye, as a counter-narrative to the "stoner" trope that literally everyone assumes "someone who smokes weed" looks like.
Sure, even now, the majority of weed culture is still dominated by the Seth Rogan's of the world (you will find them at this Weedmaps live-event at 1pm PT/4pm ET today, hosted by the king of the stoners, Snoop Dogg), but I am starting to see more types (and genders) of people learning about the benefits of cannabis products, and am excited to see all the different spaces they will be creating to celebrate the plant (hello, this is one of them!).
So for any of you that would like to get a little high today at a digital disco dance party, you can find one here, with a DJ set by SassyBlack (@sassyblackcat) and special guest Ilana Glazer, from 1-2pm PT/4-5pm ET.
Or maybe you're new-ish to cannabis and would rather watch a live tutorial on mixing your own cannabis cocktails to find a different way to partake, that can be found here, with Warren Bobrow on Facebook Live at 11am ET/2pm PT today.
Also if you, or anyone you know lives in DC, you can let them know that if they get vaccinated tomorrow, the group DC Marijuana Justice will be giving out FREE joints at a handful of vaccination sites. Please get vaccinated!
Send me a note to let me know how you're choosing to thank the Earth for this lovely little plant today, whether it's (safely) with your weed pod, or just at home with some good snacks.
