April 20 — a holiday observed by cannabis enthusiasts all over the world, a day where we can let our proverbial freak flags fly and truly celebrate the medicinal and cultural contributions of the plant we all know and love. But why 4/20, you ask? I’ll explain.
Various legends surround the origin of 420 — that it was a police code for “smoking in progress,” that it is the number of cannabinoids contained in the plant, and even that 4:20pm is the traditional time for “high” tea in Amsterdam. None of these are true, although the real story does involve 4:20pm, and it definitely includes smoking in progress.
The year was 1971 and the place was San Rafael High School in Marin County, California. A group of friends calling themselves “The Waldos” heard about an abandoned patch of pot in the woods of Pt Reyes, and they decided to seek it out. For weeks, they met each day at 4:20pm at the statue of Louis Pasteur and set off to smoke up and go treasure hunting. They never found the plants, but the code word stuck.
It turns out that one of The Waldos was friends with Phil Lesh of The Grateful Dead (it was the ’70s after all), and before long, 420 as a code for anything marijuana-related began to spread through The Grateful Dead subculture. Eventually, High Times Magazine caught wind of it and latched onto the secret code as a marketing tool, introducing 420 to the greater cannabis community where it blossomed into a cultural phenomenon.
