4/20: The Truth About Pot Culture’s Day Of Celebration

Image via arindambanerjee/Shutterstock

Happy Weed Day. If you’re reading this on April 20, you may be kicking  back in a haze of smoke. After all, it’s pot smokers’ world holiday. But why 420? The number that inspires knowing looks, giggles and thoughts of forgotten youth seems to have been a part of pot culture for as long as we can’t remember. But what the hell does it really mean?

There’s a ton of myths out there. Some of them—albeit false—are fairly believable; while others are so asinine they could only have been concocted by a true stoner. For years people thought 420 was police code for “pot smoking in progress.” Makes sense, right? And most people bought it because the industry expert—High Times Magazine—reported it first. Well, whateverHigh Times reporter wrote that piece—and whatever editor authorized its printing—must have been smoking something pretty good, because it’s complete bunk.

As another pot legend goes, there are 420 chemical elements in marijuana, or 420 molecules in THC. Totally fabricated. Cannabis consists of 315 components, give or take depending on the strain.

The pot euphemism is also not named for Hitler’s birthday. True, Hitler was born on April 20, but what does one have to do with the other? Not a damn thing.

Nor is 420 “tea time in Holland.” Who the fuck came up with that shit and what bunch of dumbasses believed it? And it’s also not the date of the first “acid trip.” The first chemist to drop LSD took that trip on April 16, 1943. Coincidentally, it was at about 4:20 p.m., but what the hell does that have to do with weed? Nothing.

Some theories are so fucked up, they had to be products of a smoke-filled haze, maybe on 420… The Bob Dylan theory, for example, says 420 was termed in honor of Dylan’s Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, in honor of the lyric, “Everybody must get stoned.” Huh? Well, 12 x 35 is 420. Wouldn’t it be great to be on the plane of consciousness that thought up that one for a bit…

Watch Coral Reefer’s April 7 episode of “Stoney Sunday.” Coral shows off several pieces and smokes some concentrate as she talks about a variety of topics in pot culture. Great weed-inspired ramblings, but if you check out the 6:30 mark of the episode, Coral gives a super-stoned presentation about the origination of 420.

No, the truth is 420 was coined in San Rafael, Calif. by a group of high-school stoners who called themselves the Waldos back in 1971. They heard about an unattended plot and agreed to meet up and search after school at 4:20. When they didn’t turn up the patch of weed, they continued to meet up and search over the next several weeks, always at 4:20, getting high as a bunch of kites the whole time. Although they never turned up the marijuana plot, the term 420 stuck.

I could say to one of my friends, I’d go, 420, and it was telepathic,” one of the former Waldos told the Huffington Post in 2009. “He would know if I was saying, ‘Hey, do you wanna go smoke some?’ Or, ‘Do you have any?’ Or, ‘Are you stoned right now?’ It was kind of telepathic just from the way you said it. Our teachers didn’t know what we were talking about. Our parents didn’t know what we were talking about.”

But how did 420 spread from the San Rafael high school to the nation? Enter the Grateful Dead. A lot of smokers are aware of that connection, but for the wrong reasons. No, the Grateful Dead did not always stay in room 420 at hotels when it was  on the road. And 420 was not the street address of the Dead’s San Francisco offices. And sorry, it cannot be confirmed if Jerry Garcia died at 4:20 a.m. But since his body was discovered at 4:23 a.m. on Aug.9, 1995, it’s highly unlikely he actually died exactly three minutes prior.

No, the Grateful Dead picked up the term from the Waldos themselves. After San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury hippie scene fell apart in the last 60s, the Dead packed up and moved down to the Marin County area, blocks from San Rafael High School. The Waldos used to hang out with the Dead, listening to its music and smoking bud during its practice sessions. Although no one with the Grateful Dead scene can remember exactly where they heard 420 the first time, they can confirm hanging with the Waldos around that time.

Throughout the 70s and 80s the term spread through the Dead’s underground following. When High Times caught on to it, 420 went global.

I started incorporating it into everything we were doing,” High Times editor Steve Hager told the Huffington Post. “I started doing all these big events – the World Hemp Expo Extravaganza and the Cannabis Cup – and we built everything around 420. The publicity that High Times gave it is what made it an international thing. Until then, it was relatively confined to the Grateful Dead subculture. But we blew it out into an international phenomenon.”

Maybe so, Hager, but your writers were enjoying a little too much 420 to check their 420 facts, weren’t they? Police code, my ass. But the magazine sure cemented  420’s place in pot culture. In fact, in the early 90s, High Times had the foresight to purchase the domain www.420.com. It’s classic code in marijuana culture, but its references reach into the mainstream, as well.

Did you know that all clocks in the movie Pulp Fiction are set to 4:20? And—ironically or not—the bill that established California’s system of medical marijuana ID cards was SB 420. No, seriously. Senator John Vasconcellos introduced the bill, and let’s not even pretend that no one in his office’s got the reference, let alone any of the state’s senators. Please.