A Brief History Of 420

Drinkers have long had a monopoly on holidays designed with them in mind – St. Patrick’s Day, New Years Eve, Mardis Gras, and Cinco De Mayo. Let’s also give them Fourth of July, Memorial Day Weekend, Spring Break, Halloween,SuperBowl Weekend and for the hardcore – Presidents Day, MLK Day, Arbor Day, Christmas and Easter. It wasn’t until the 90′s, that marijuana smokers first started celebrating their own unique holiday in California (figures) on April 20th of each year. A phenomenon now celebrated (or should I just say practiced) on 4/20 at 4:20 pm around the world.

So where did the date and time come from, The Puffington Post (I meanHuffington) tracked down the origins in detail and you can go to the link for all the foggy details, but in a nutshell it began with a group of highschool stonersknown as the Waldos who would meet at 4:20 at a statue of Loius Pasteur at San Rafael High School to get high and go on drug seeking adventures – the signal or code for such activities was coined “420″ . These were very special kids indeed, because not only did they love weed, but because of family connections and geographic luck they had access to one of the biggest counterculture bands ever – The Grateful Dead. In time, the Dead Heads by osmosis adopted 420 as their code for all things cannabis and sometime in the early 90′s the pot promoting magazine High Times purchased the 420 web domain for all things chronic… here’s a funny 420 video more in line with the spirit of TDA.