TO VISIT BEFORE
s l a v i t Fes YOU DIE
BY TATIANA MELENDEZ
There is something in the air today. Maybe you've noticed? Now that the pandemic is something we are learning to live with, it is safe to gather again; inperson celebrations are back in full force! After a two-year high-atus, we can finally celebrate 4/20 in our usual, epic fashion. If you work in the cannabis industry or love a good excuse to toke, you know one weed holiday a year is far too little for an herb that is so important to so many. In addition, 1 in 3 Americans live in a state where cannabis is legal now, and cannabis and CBD are being used to aid with symptoms of epilepsy, cancer, autoimmune disorders, and many other conditions around the country. You can even get a college degree in cannabis. Who would have thought? The cannabis enthusiast's year starts with the most widely recognized stoner holiday. THE stoner holiday, if you will. The day that is so big, Willie Nelson called President Biden to declare it a national holiday this year. But besides being the most well-known cannabis holiday, the origins of 4/20 are more mysterious. One widely accepted belief is that 420 was the penal code for cannabis in California at one point, but there's no evidence to support that idea. Another theory is that a tradition of smoking weed at 4:20 pm every afternoon was adopted by a group of California high school students. San Rafael High School friends called themselves the Waldos, as they often hung out by a wall outside of their school. They coined the term in 1971 to refer to their after-school trips and because extracurricular activities had usually ended by then. This group Steve Capper, Dave Reddix, Jeffrey Noel, Larry Schwartz, and Mark Gravich, became known as the "Waldos" because they met at a wall. They would say "420" to each other as code for marijuana. As Reddix told TIME in 2017,
"We got tired of the Friday night football scene with all of the jocks. We were the guys sitting under the stands smoking a doobie, wondering what we were doing there." Later, Reddix's brother helped him get work with Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh as a roadie, so the band is said to have helped popularize the term "420." On December 28, 1990, a group of Deadheads in Oakland handed out flyers that invited people to smoke "420" on April 20 at 4:20 pm. One ended up with Steve Bloom, a former reporter for High Times magazine, an authority on cannabis culture. The magazine printed the flyer in 1991 and continued to reference the number. Soon, it became known worldwide as the code for marijuana. Then, in 1998, the outlet acknowledged that the "Waldos" were the "inventors" of 420. thechronicmagazine.com
MAY 2022
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