It is 4/20 People! Bake Up to Wake up

A now international day of awareness, protest and freedom for marijuana users! A time for marijuana users to gather  publicly in a show of civil disobedience toward draconian laws that persecute an extremely useful plant and the people that use it.

If you are one of the uninformed, uneducated, or already indoctrinated into the anti-marijuana camp, this blog is not for you. Re-education takes a lot of information, an open mind, and time. This blog is for my fellow freedom fighters.

History

The term 4-20 originated at San Rafael High School, in 1971, among a group of about a dozen pot-smokers that called themselves the Waldos. The term was shorthand for the time of day the group would meet, at the campus statue of Louis Pasteur, to smoke pot. To get even more detailed, the story is that they originally met there the first time to go looking for a marijuana plant rumored to be growing wild in the area. So they met, got high, and had fun looking for but not finding the plant. They then added 4-20 to their own slang, a discreet code for “let’s go get high” and its use has spread among members of now multiple generations!

Myths

• It’s the Los Angeles or New York police radio code for marijuana smoking in progress.
  It’s not police radio code for anything in California or New York, let alone that.
• It’s the number of chemical compounds in marijuana.
  The number of chemical compounds in marijuana is 315, give or take depending on variety, soil and other conditions.
• April 20 is the date that Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, or Janis Joplin died
  Though these performers were strongly identified with drug use during their brief lives, none of them died on April 20.
  Morrison died on July 3, Hendrix on September 18, and Joplin on October 4.
• The 20th of April is the best time to plant marijuana.
  There’s no one “best time”; that answer would change from one part of the country to another, or even one country to another.

Interesting Coincidence

The very first intentional ingestion of LSD took place at 4:20! From the notes of Dr. Albert Hoffman:

•  April 19, 1943: Preparation of an 0.5% aqueous solution of d-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate.
      4:20 P.M.: 0.5 cc (0.25 mg LSD) ingested orally. The solution is tasteless.

4:20 is the time of day an H.P. Lovecraft character cites for having become sober after succumbing to the intoxication of a “mirage-plant”:

“I had encountered at least one of those curious mirage-plants about which so many of our men told stories. Anderson had warned me of them, and described their appearance very closely—the shaggy stalk, the spiky leaves, and the mottled blossoms whose gaseous dream-breeding exhalations penetrate every existing make of mask…Although everything was spinning perilously, I tried to start in the right direction and hack my way ahead. My route must have been far from straight, for it seemed hours before I was free of the mirage-plant’s pervasive influence. Gradually the dancing lights began to disappear, and the shimmering spectral scenery began to assume the aspect of solidity. When I did get wholly clear I looked at my watch and was astonished to find that the time was only 4:20. Though eternities had seemed to pass, the whole experience could have consumed little more than a half-hour.”

Today 

Hats, t-shirts, stickers, news articles, and protest gatherings have now made it a not very discreet way of telling the world you belief in freedom. By extension April 20th (”4/20″ in shorthand) has evolved into a counterculture holiday, where people gather to celebrate cannabis and it’s many uses.

Last year, on April 20th 2007, at 4:20pm PST more than 700 people gathered at City Hall in Victoria, BC to celebrate Victoria’s 10th annual 4/20 celebration. Victoria police were not visibly in attendance and no arrests were made.

Let’s have another safe and peaceful April 20 2008 and I’ll see you at 4/20!