cannabisnews.com: Pot Smokers Celebrate High Holiday 





Pot Smokers Celebrate High Holiday 
Posted by FoM on April 21, 2000 at 07:01:16 PT
By Raphael Lewis, Globe Staff
Source: Boston Globe
Like an underground religious sect, they gathered yesterday at 4:20 p.m. sharp in living rooms and college dormitories, city parks and street corners, set fire to their sacred plant, and inhaled its mind-altering smoke.The ritual's guidelines fell apart there, but in many cases, what followed went something like this: giggling, debating the existence of God, applying eye drops, and devouring multiple slices of pizza.
So went another ''420,'' the so-called stoner New Year's, a counterculture celebration of marijuana every year on April 20, or 4/20, to increasing fanfare.From Vermont to California, Florida to Oregon, legions of pot smokers convened in groups large and small, in public and private, to light up a joint and protest the illegality of their beloved weed, which they claim has many medical benefits and manufacturing applications as hemp.Antidrug advocates maintain that those are thinly veiled rationales to legalize a substance most use recreationally. And police officials aware of the tradition view it solely as a way for smokers to thumb their nose at the law.The ultimate grass-roots holiday, 420 is still an indecipherable code term to most people. For example, Massachusetts Institute of Technology junior Jasper Vicenti advertised his 420 celebration by creating a Web site on the university server called: http://fourtwenty.mit.edu./On it was a small note that read ''4/20 at bexley,'' a reference to the campus building where the gathering was to take place.When asked about 420 yesterday, Boston Police Department spokesman Kevin Jones said, ''I haven't heard anything about it.''Still, he cautioned, giggling 420 celebrants were well-advised to steer clear of police officers: They may not know 420, but they are acquainted with state and federal drug laws.''Arrests would be made,'' Jones said curtly.Even among marijuana's staunchest advocates, 420, which originated in California about 30 years ago among teenagers who would smoke pot every day at 4:20 p.m., has a ways to go. For one thing, many marijuana smokers are not exactly famous for their motivation and their memorization of key dates, and the idea of smoking in public doesn't thrill the slightly paranoid.''We were possibly thinking of setting up something kind of like for fun on the lawn, but we didn't have enough time,'' said Jason Burk, vice president of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's Cannabis Reform Coalition.''I knew it was 420 because I had to write the date four or five times today, but it didn't really strike me,'' said Bill Downing, head of the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition, who said he ended up doing nothing special yesterday.Still, across the country, large-scale 420 events took place yesterday in San Francisco, New York City, Washington, Cincinnati, Tampa, and Pittsburgh, according to High Times magazine, which has feverishly promoted the holiday for years.Locally, aside from Vicenti's event - which involved no marijuana for fear of legal repercussions - public events were tough to spot.The exception was at the University of Vermont in Burlington, where several hundred pot smokers came together on a small quadrangle to bang drums and puff on pipes in a gathering that has occurred for years, university officials said.''We treat it essentially as a form of civil disobedience and free speech,'' said Enrique Corredera, a university spokesman. He said police have not made any arrests at the event, acting instead as visual reminders to ralliers that their 420 festivities must remain peaceful and orderly.''Interestingly, the police have found that an awful lot of people who attend are smoking cigarettes,'' he said.Tom Fucarile, a University of Vermont sophomore who went to last year's 420 festivities and planned on doing so again yesterday, said he didn't know who organized the event and doubted that any one person was behind it. ''It's such a symbol in the subculture that everyone comes out for it,'' he said.According to Steven Hager, editor of High Times, the holiday began in the California city of San Rafael in the early 1970s, when a small group of high school students called the Waldos began gathering every day at 4:20 p.m. to toke up at the foot of a statue of Louis Pasteur.Soon, said Hager, the idea of taking a ''420 Louie'' spread, receiving wide publicity from the Grateful Dead, who were based in San Rafael then. Within a few years, people began referring to getting high as a 420, a code that would easily be missed by parents, teachers, police officers, and bosses, Hager said.Around 1990, with so many people speaking of a 420, April 20 came to be viewed as ''the ultimate 420.''''It's definitely a religious holiday,'' Hager said yesterday. ''It's a ceremony that's being ritualized and passed down as a day to protest the oppression of a way of life.''In general, though, most observers of 420 tend to view the event as a good excuse to get high, often in public, a place normally off limits to pot smoking. ''It's just a lot of fun, the stoner's `Miller time,''' said Keith Stroup, executive director of the Washington-based National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML. ''But I would say that as long as the government continues to arrest marijuana smokers, 420 will become a bigger and bigger event each year. It will become a national protest on prohibition eventually.''But some advocates of legalized marijuana look down on 420 as a black eye on an otherwise serious political movement. Denny Lane of the Vermont Grassroots Party, which supports marijuana's legalization, said yesterday, ''I really don't believe in 420 because the press usually portrays it as a kid with a a purple mohawk and a gold nose ring smoking a joint, when the issues are way more serious than that.''Vicenti, who heads the MIT Hemp Coalition, said his group's gathering did not include public marijuana smoking because ''we don't want to condone that sort of behavior as an organization.'' At last year's 420, he said, people tended to smoke cigarettes and enjoy the barbecue, preferring to light up in the privacy of their dorm rooms.Of course, necessity is the mother of invention when it comes to such events.''I don't have any right now, so I can't partake anyway,'' said Vicenti, of Newburyport. ''That's the problem with the black market.''Published: April 21, 2000© Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company. Related Articles & Web Sites:420times.comhttp://www.420times.com/420.comhttp://www.420.com/Stoner Chic Traces Origin To San Rafaelhttp://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread5460.shtmlA Teacher Asks, and Asks Again, "What's 420?'http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread1642.shtmlCannabisNews NORML Articles: http://google.com/search?num=10&q=cannabisnews+NORML+site:cannabisnews.com
Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help




Comment #3 posted by A-RoCC on April 20, 2001 at 13:02:56 PT:
it's 4/20!!!!
I say everyone try to hot-box planet Earth.....
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #2 posted by Graybee on April 19, 2001 at 09:40:15 PT:
4/20/01
is there a celebration in florida tomorrow? preferably south florida...(?)
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #1 posted by legalizeit on April 21, 2000 at 07:34:13 PT
National prohibition protest day - good idea!
And so close to Earth Day - how appropriate!If every pro-pot person at a given university or neighborhood were to publicly light up at 4:20 on 4/20, what would the cops do? They'd go nuts! They wouldn't be able to arrest a whole crowd, I would think. I can just imagine a drug-dog let loose in that smokefest - he'd be chasing his tail in circles!Of course, with the draconian laws in effect, the ones arrested would not be too happy, so I can understand the reticence to stage a public smoking session.>''Arrests would be made,'' Jones said curtly.>''Interestingly, the police have found that an awful lot of people who attend are smoking cigarettes,'' [Corredera] said.Of course, smoking that deadly weed is not a problem.>''I really don't believe in 420 because the press usually portrays it as a kid with a a purple mohawk and a gold nose ring smoking a joint, when the issues are way more serious than that.''Not according to our favorite general. He says that kid is the most dangerous drug in America!Hope everyone had a great 4/20 day.
[ Post Comment ]

Post Comment


Name: Optional Password: 
E-Mail: 
Subject: 
Comment: [Please refrain from using profanity in your message]
Link URL: 
Link Title: