I should state right at the outset that I’m not a pot-smoker. Never tried marijuana in any form, actually, nor does the drug have any real appeal for me. Nevertheless, it was frequently invoked as an inside joke between my best friend Jack and I all through high school. We made thousands of ganja references, invented an elaborate song about several varieties of weed while in Hawaii with my family on vacation one year, built a lego car called the Rasmussen Machine that was covered with little green lego leafs that looked like cannabis, and would call my mom and youngest sister (around 9 or 10 years old at the time) every day at 4:20 to ask them what time it was–and then say “foooooooooouuur twennnnnnnnteeeeeeeeee,” cackle for a while and then hang up). After a while, even my mom started to like it, and every once in a while, Jack’s mom would come in in the early afternoon and say, “Steel–there’s a phone call for you.” I’d go in and pick up the phone and hear my mom’s voice. At first I’d be worried–why would she be calling me in the middle of the afternoon. And then she’d say “Steel, do you know what time it is?” I’d look at the clock, grin, and answer, “Awwwwww the Moms [I call her the Moms], it’s fooooooooouuuur twennnnnnnteeeee!” and we’d both laugh.<\/p>\n
Yesterday was April 20th (4\/20) and I got an unexpected call from one of my little sisters. I was with friends on the way to a basketball game, but I thought it might be an emergency, so I\u00a0interrupted\u00a0our conversation to take the call. She just wanted to tell me that it was 4\/20. When I got home from the game, I checked my email. One of my best friends and fellow graduate of BYU, (the school that’s been ranked as\u00a0#1 Stone Cold Sober university in the nation<\/a>\u00a0for the past 13 years), had emailed me to say “happy 4-20. i almost missed it!” That’s all he wrote. Together with my sister’s call and this post<\/a> from a local Dominos pizza store I saw on the interwebs, it kind of made my day. Juvenile, perhaps–but still kind of funny, even though I am alleged to be roughly 28 years old and some kind of an adult.<\/p>\n I don’t know when I first heard about 4:20 as a pot smoking reference. As with most cultural legends or pervasive social myths, it’s hard to pinpoint a moment of origin or a time when you suddenly became initiated into a new state of knowledge or gained access to some previous obscure lore, unless it involves a moment of extreme embarrassment or humiliation (think of Smalls learning who Babe Ruth<\/a>\u00a0was in The Sandlot<\/em>, for instance). Just as I’m unclear about when or how I became aware of 4:20 as the time of day that potheads around the world fired up their blunts to the sweet sounds of Peter Tosh<\/a>, I was never exactly clear as to why 4:20 was pot smoking time, or why some of my peers seemed to be observing April 20th\u00a0as a religious holiday by taking the day off from school. I heard many of the usual legends–that it was Hitler’s birthday (while true, I never understood how this was related to marijuana culture), that it was “tea time” in Britain–not true, and that it was police code for marijuana possession–which doesn’t make a ton of sense, since most states use different codes to refer to various infractions, since laws differ from state to state.<\/p>\n With this in mind, I was more than a little interested to hear this story<\/a> on NPR several years ago. It’s well worth a listen–not only for its interesting account of the history of 4:20, but because it might quite possible be the most awkward four minute and 14 second conversation in the history of NPR (4:14? Really? Would it have been that hard to edit the piece to last 4 minutes and 20 seconds?), which is quite a feat in itself. Seriously, listen<\/a> to it. A couple of years ago, I also saw this piece<\/a> in the Huffington Post, which I think did quite a nice job tracking the origin and history of 4:20 as a social phenomenon and pretty widespread cultural reference.<\/p>\n So here’s the story: there were a bunch of kids called the Waldos in the 70s from San Rafael, California that used to gather after school at 4:20 to smoke pot. I remember reading somewhere that one of them had earned detention for himself for some reason and so they arranged to meet each other at 4:20 at a flagpole or a statue when he was released to smoke weed. Other stories say that it was a meeting time for them to go off in search of a rumored secret crop of marijuana growing nearby. Soon, the phrase was adopted into the Grateful Dead fan subculture, and from there it gradually gained more widespread recognition. Today it seems comfortably\u00a0ensconced in common parlance, particularly among high school and college students. If you’re looking for a longer history of marijuana use (including, I believe, an account of the Waldos and the origins of 4:20), check out “Ratso” Sloman’s book Reefer Madness<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n So, that’s the history of 4:20 in a nutshell. I think the most curious aspect of the spread of the phrase is how effective a relatively insignificant group of youth were able to coin and employ a phrase that has gradually become a cultural commonplace. I’d love to read a more detailed history of transmission and amplification, a kind of etymological and sociological history of the phrase that attempted to reconstruct the phrase’s growth in popularity, a kind of Google Trends map<\/a>\u00a0(notice the spikes each year on April 20th!)\u00a0of the phrase that dated back before 2005, and had explanatory entries for each of the historical ebbs and flows of usage (not just search queries for the term).<\/p>\n As a final, more serious note, and this is perhaps something I’d like to touch on in greater detail in a future posts, I think that the United States’ current drug policy regarding marijuana possession is deeply distressing. NORML has a good interactive map<\/a> with information about different state laws surrounding marijuana possession, but I think that the current trend towards decriminalization is probably a good one, on the whole. A couple of interesting articles on the topic, one from the Economist<\/a>, and one from the Freakonomics blog<\/a>\u00a0do a nice job of summarizing several important viewpoints on the question. Here’s my take: I think in the majority of cases, we should think of nonviolent drug offenses, or nonviolent drug use, as a public health concerns and not a criminal concern. Drug abuse ought to be treated primarily as a medical (and in many cases psychological) problem, not a criminal one. Your thoughts, readers?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I should state right at the outset that I’m not a pot-smoker. Never tried marijuana in any form, actually, nor does the drug have any real appeal for me. Nevertheless, it was frequently invoked as an inside joke between my best friend Jack and I all through high school. We made thousands of ganja references, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New post on The Origins of 4:20: http:\/\/wp.me\/p1vqMH-1k","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[35,36,37],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-from-tumblr","tag-crime","tag-drugs","tag-marijuana"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Steel Wagstaff","author_link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/author\/steel\/"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","featured_image_src_square":null,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd6z5D-1k","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":415,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/cedar-dance-parties-first-50\/","url_meta":{"origin":82,"position":0},"title":"Cedar Dance Parties [First 50]","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"July 25, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Just about every morning, while mom pumps, makes breakfast, and goes jogging, Cedar and I use part of our time together to kick out the jams and have a proper dance party. Some stuff he loves, some stuff he merely tolerates, but we always get his booty moving. Currently his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Spotify Playlists"","block_context":{"text":"Spotify Playlists","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/category\/listening\/spotify-playlists\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/cedar.jpg?fit=300%2C227&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4861,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/happy-geeks-a-story-by-steel-wagstaff-age-16-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":82,"position":1},"title":"“Happy Geeks”: A Story by Steel Wagstaff, age 16","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"June 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"This past week I started teaching an introductory college composition course for a group of incoming UW student athletes. It's a small group, just 14 male students, and most of the group are football players. For their second writing assignment, I gave them an essay that I wrote was I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4871,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/how-to-write-a-dare-letter\/","url_meta":{"origin":82,"position":2},"title":"How To Write a “DARE” Letter","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"June 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"So there are \"kids, don't do drugs\" lectures, and then there are \"kids, don't do drugs\" lectures (like Tolstoy's \"Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves\"--an absolute classic). I grew up Mormon, which meant that the Word of Wisdom (Section 89 of the Doctrine and Covenants, a book of LDS scripture) formed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Lessons from Oppen's Letters"","block_context":{"text":"Lessons from Oppen's Letters","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/category\/lessons-from-oppens-letters\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":104,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/beck-the-greatest-music-video-of-all-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":82,"position":3},"title":"Beck & the Greatest Music Video of All Time","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"April 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"As a teenager, I was wild for Beck. It started with \"Loser,\" a song I liked so much when I was 12 that I bought the Mellow Gold album and started collecting everything else I could find by the musician. I think that the larger opinion of Beck at the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/neil-strauss-sexx-laws.jpg?fit=500%2C334&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":811,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/events-and-venues-part-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":82,"position":4},"title":"#1b: Events and Venues, Part 2","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"May 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday I wrote about our wedding ceremony itself and our decision about where to hold it. Today I want to finish the post by writing about the two other events we held that weekend: a pizza party on Friday evening (the night before the wedding), and our wedding reception held\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Wedding Planning"","block_context":{"text":"Wedding Planning","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/category\/wedding-planning\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/05\/7207491090_95063dbf26_b.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":908,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wedding-clothing\/","url_meta":{"origin":82,"position":5},"title":"#7: Wedding Clothing","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"July 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"They say that\u00a0clothes make the man. Mark Twain concurred, adding helpfully that \"Naked people have little or no influence on society.\" While nudity is certainly the preferred mode for celebrating a wedding, we decided to conduct that part of the celebration in private and to wear clothing to our wedding\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Wedding Planning"","block_context":{"text":"Wedding Planning","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/category\/wedding-planning\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/07\/mark-twain.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/07\/mark-twain.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1 1x, https:\/\/steelwagstaff.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/07\/mark-twain.jpg?w=525&h=300&crop=1 1.5x, https:\/\/steelwagstaff.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/07\/mark-twain.jpg?w=700&h=400&crop=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4907,"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions\/4907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}