Accepted origin
- Snopes.com, High Times magazine, The Marijuana-Logues, and The Straight Dope claim that in the early 1970s, a group of teenagers at San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California used to meet every day after school at 4:20 p.m. to smoke marijuana at the water tower. One piece of evidence supporting an origin of the term from the time 4:20 is the fact that the number is always said "four twenty" and not "four hundred twenty." This theory is also the most cited, and the most widely-accepted.
Urban legends
- 420 is a police code for a drug bust or for "marijuana smoking in progress," or that 4:20 is or was the shift change for the police.
- There are 420 chemicals in marijuana.
- April 21 is the last day on which one is supposed to plant cannabis seeds (with the variety of planting regions and cannabis genetics, no such date can logically apply to all growing operations).
- April 20 is approximately the last frost, making it time to move pot plants outdoors.
- At 4:20 on an analog clock, the hands line up in a downward angle giving the appearance that the face of the clock has a smoking instrument in its "mouth."
- Marijuana grew wild on or near a purported Highway 420 in the western United States in the 1960s.
- At some American junior or senior high schools, "after-school detention" ends at 4:20. Thus 4:20 signifies the time when the detainees are finally free to smoke after the school day.
- 420 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which marijuana burns, the primary method of use.
- The term came from H. P. Lovecraft's Within The Walls of Eryx which contains the line "My route must have been far from straight, for it seemed hours before I was free of the mirage-plant's pervasive influence... When I did get wholly clear I looked at my watch and was astonished to find that the time was only 4:20".
April 20th events and traditions
Many American cities and colleges hold pro-marijuana rallies, or at least celebratory marijuana gatherings, on April 20. The authorities' reaction to these gatherings varies from place to place, as shown by two prominent examples. [ edit ]
University of Colorado
The largest known celebration of this kind has been held annually for the past decade at the University of Colorado's Farrand Field in Boulder, Colorado. In 2005, responding to negative press that year, University Police made their first attempt to disperse the gathering. They posted signs saying student were not allowed on the field that afternoon. After the field was overrun by an estimated 2000 or more students, police declined to issue any citations, as with past years. They did, however, turn the sprinklers on in an attempt to disperse the crowd. Colorado is one of a handful of states that has decriminalized small amounts of marijuana. [ edit ]
University of Vermont
It was a tradition for many years at the University of Vermont for a very large amount of people to gather on the campus green and smoke openly in protest of marijuana prohibition laws. The protest was traditionally tolerated by the police, who viewed it as an act of civil disobedience and would merely observe to ensure the safety of participants and bystanders. The annual protest was squashed on April 20, 2002, however, due to a decree by incoming University President Daniel Fogel, who ordered campus police to maintain a strict, heavily armed presence on the campus green. Students were not allowed to stay on the green (for any reason) and students who attempted to do so were ID'd, searched and detained. Fogel has stated multiple times before and since that he was trying to clean up the "reputation" of the University. Since then, police wearing bullet-proof vests and armed with shotguns have been a staple of 4/20 celebrations on the green; and while the protest has gone forward on a much smaller scale, police now arrest any smokers and the tone has changed markedly from that of a peaceful, albeit defiant, protest to one of conflict and division between students, police, and administrators.