SEATTLE (AP) – Saturday was April 20, a national holiday for marijuana culture, as college students gathered amidst smoke at campus quads and pot shops in legal states to thank customers at 4:20 p.m. We will provide you with a discount.
This year, nearly half of states and the nation's capital allow recreational marijuana use, giving activists an opportunity to reflect on how far their movement has come. Many states have taken “social equity” measures to ensure that communities of color, which have been hardest hit by the drug war, reap the economic benefits of legalization. And the White House has shown an openness to marijuana reform.
FILE – Customers smoke marijuana at Lowell's Original Cannabis Cafe, a legal marijuana facility in Los Angeles, Nov. 13, 2019. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)
Let's take a look at the history of 4/20.
Why 4/20?
FILE – April 15, 2019 A vendor makes change for marijuana customers at a Los Angeles cannabis market. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)
This date and the origins of the term “420” have long been ambiguous. This may be a reference to police laws against marijuana possession, or it may be a reference to Bob Dylan's “Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35,” which has the refrain “Everyone should be stoned.” Some people claimed that there were. 420 is the product of 12 times 35.
But the common explanation is that it started in the 1970s with a group of big-ass guys who called themselves “Waldos” at San Rafael High School in Marin County, California, north of San Francisco. is. The friend's brother, fearing his cannabis farm in the woods near Point Reyes would be raided, drew a map and gave the teens permission to harvest it.
FILE – Police handcuff a suspect during a drug raid in Miami, May 18, 1979. Police said eight people were arrested and marijuana was seized. (AP Photo/Al Diaz, File)
In the fall of 1971, at 4:20 p.m., just after classes and football practice, the group gathered in front of the school's statue of chemist Louis Pasteur, smoked joints, and headed out foraging in weed fields. . They couldn't find it, but the word “420 Louie”, and later simply “420”, would take on a life of its own in their personal dictionary.
The Walds have preserved postmarked letters and other artifacts from the 1970s that mention “420,'' which they now keep in a bank vault. When the Oxford English Dictionary added the term in 2017, it cited some of these documents as its earliest recorded usage.
Associated Press correspondent Donna Warder reports on the so-called April 20th.
How did “420” become popular?
One Waldo brother was a close friend of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, as Lesh once admitted in an interview with the Huffington Post. Waldos became involved in band circles and the slang spread.
Fast forward to the early 1990s. Steve Bloom, a reporter for cannabis magazine High Times, was attending a Dead show when he urged people to “meet at 4:20 on April 20th for 420 in Marin.” I was handed a flyer. Mount Tamalpais sunset spot, county of Bolinas Ridge. ” High Times published it.
“This is a phenomenon,” one Waldo member, Steve Capper, now 69, once told The Associated Press. “Most things die within a few years, but this goes on and on. It's not like someday somebody's going to say, 'OK, the new year of cannabis is June 23.'”
While the Wald family came up with the term, the person who created the fliers distributed at Dead shows, essentially turning April 20th into a holiday, remains unknown.
How is it celebrated?
Of course, along with the weeds.
FILE – People smoke marijuana during a marijuana rally held annually on April 20 at Civic Center Park in downtown Denver on Wednesday, April 20, 2016. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)
For example, the Mile High 420 Festival in Denver typically draws thousands of people and bills itself as the world's largest free 4/20 event. San Francisco's Golden Gate Park's Hippie Hill also drew large crowds, but organizers cited a lack of financial sponsors and city budget cuts and canceled it this year.
The University Quad and the State Capitol Lawn are also known for gathering for April 20th celebrations, and the University of Colorado Boulder is historically one of the largest universities, but more than a decade ago, administrators There haven't been that many since the annual ban on smoking.
Some breweries are producing 420-themed beers, but without the laces. That includes Atlanta's Sweetwater Brewing, which is hosting the 420 Music Festival this weekend and whose founder is from the University of Colorado.
FILE – A drug addict carries a bundle of marijuana plants down a steep slope after working with other law enforcement officers to remove a patch of marijuana plants from a national forest near Entiant, Washington, on Sept. 20, 2005. Enforcement Bureau employee. (AP Photo)/Elaine Thompson, File)
Petaluma, Calif.'s Lagunitas Brewing, in partnership with the coiner of the term, releases “Waldos Special Ale” every April 20th. The Waldo family will be there this Saturday to sample the beers, and for their beer they chose “hops that smell and taste like the wettest marijuana,” said Dave Reddix, one of the Waldo's. said in an email.
April 20th is also a major industry event where vendors gather to try out each other's products.
politics
Recent successful legalization campaigns in Ohio, Minnesota, and Delaware have increased the number of states that allow recreational marijuana to 24. An additional 14 states allow medical use, including Kentucky, where a medical marijuana bill passed last year goes into effect in 2025. Other states only allow products low in THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, for certain medical conditions.
FILE – From left, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.N.Y.), Sen. Cory Booker (D.N.J.), and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) decriminalize marijuana at the federal level. Announcing a bill to the Capitol on Wednesday, July 14, 2021, on Washington Hill. (AP Photo/Amanda Andrade Rose, File)
However, marijuana remains illegal under federal law. This means it is listed with drugs like heroin on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, meaning it has no federally recognized medical use and has a high potential for abuse.
However, the Biden administration has taken several steps toward marijuana reform. The president pardoned thousands of people convicted of “simple possession” crimes on federal land and the District of Columbia.
Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services recommended that the Drug Enforcement Administration reclassify marijuana to Schedule III, which would allow it to have medical uses under federal law.
A Gallup poll last fall found that 70% of adults supported legalization, the highest level ever recorded by the polling firm and more than double the 30% who supported legalization in 2000. It becomes.
FILE – Laguna Woods Village retrial seniors Kay Nelson, left, and Brian Glaude. People chat in the lobby of Bud & Bloom Cannabis Dispensary while waiting for the free shuttle to arrive in Santa Ana, California, on February 19, 2019. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
Vivian McPeak, who helped found Seattle Hempfest more than 30 years ago, reflected on how much the marijuana industry has evolved in his lifetime.
“It's surreal to drive by a store that sells marijuana,” he says. “A lot of people laughed at us and said, 'That's never going to happen.'”
What does that mean?
McPeak described the recent April 20th as a “mixed situation.” Despite progress in the legalization movement, many small producers struggle to compete with large producers, and many Americans remain in prison for marijuana convictions, he said. said.
“We can celebrate our victories, and we can also strategize and organize to advance the cause,” he said. “While some may feel a certain complacency, we still have work to do. We will burn the leather on those shoes until we get everyone out of jail and prison.” I have to keep going.”
For the Waldo family, April 20th means nothing more than a good day.
FILE – Gabe Williams works on an exhibit at the Cannabis Museum in Las Vegas, September 18, 2018. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)
“We're not political. We're jokesters,” Capper said. “But there was a time that we cannot forget, when it was secret and hidden. … The energy back then was more charged and in some ways more exciting.
“I'm not saying it's all good. It's not good that they're putting people in jail,” he continued. “You don't want to go back there.”
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Associated Press writer Claire Rush contributed from Portland, Oregon.
