IT'S 4:20. DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR KIDS ARE SMOKING?

May I interest you in some Aunt Mary? Or perhaps a little baby bhang?
No, I can see, you prefer El Diablito. Or bambalacha? Juju? Laughing
weed? Doobie, chillum, ganja, blue de Hue, black mo, ding, bud, leaf,
Marley, pachalolo? Of course, how could I be so foolish, some rainy
day woman? Still not with me? How about some skunk, righteous bush
or, let's be perfectly clear, marijuana?

The intimate, hazy compact between pot smokers and their herb has
generated a thesaurus of terms for cannabis, rivalled only perhaps by
the Inuit and their supposedly countless words for snow. Now one of
those terms has leapt from the bubbling bong of pot subculture and
landed in the American mainstream: 420, pronounced four-twenty, has
become the banner cry for high-school pot smokers and for those
campaigning to legalize marijuana.

It can be used as a verb, noun or adjective. One can 420 (smoke pot),
be 420ed (have smoked pot and be stoned) or remark that "it's 4:20,"
even when it is not, as an exhortation to let the smoking commence.
In the West Coast bud-hubs of northern California and Oregon, a
popular car sticker reads "4:20 - 24-7," encouraging pot smoking
every hour of every day. Another goes "It's 4:19 -- gotta minute?''

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)
will hold its annual conference on April 20 (4/20), a day they have
christened Stoner's New Year. "We have scheduled the conference to
coincide with 4/20,'' it says, "a date that has become associated in
the popular culture as a special day for marijuana smokers. We hope
to build on that tradition.'' NORML also supports a Web site and
newsletter, 420times.com, and a 420girls site featuring "hundreds of
beautiful girls smoking weed."

All over the Internet, there are sites selling T-shirts, snowboards
and posters with 420 motifs. At the 420 Lounge, a chat room run by
the High Times newsletter, pot smokers can discuss their habit.

The origin of the phrase is obscure. The most common explanation is
that it comes from the police code "420,'' used by officers in
California to alert colleagues to a pot-smoking incident. It was then
taken up by the rock band, the Grateful Dead, who popularized it as a
term for lighting up. Another theory is that 4:20 was the time most
high school students got back home and lit up. If they smoked at the
same time, they believed, it would be impossible for the police to
catch them all. A more sinister edge was given to the term in 1999,
when two students at Columbine High School in Colorado went on a
shooting spree, that left 15 people dead. They chose April 20 because
it was the anniversary of Hitler's death. But high school authorities
have since been more concerned about students treating 4/20 as a
Saturnalia.

On university campuses across the United States, April 20 is an
occasion for dope smoking, nudity and pranks. In the United States,
where it is illegal to buy alcohol until you are 21, pot smoking is
far more entrenched in high school life. It has spawned an entire
culture of art, poetry and films, which teenagers inherited from
their Baby Boomer parents and fused with the cartoons, videos and
music of their own generation.

American high school movies, such as Dude, Where's My Car, are far
more likely to include scenes of pot smoking than drunkenness. Teen
pot smoking, however, relies on being subversive. Now that the
hairies of the adult hemp movement are bringing 420 into the
mainstream, parents will work out what 420 means, and the term will
fizzle from use. Sweet Lucy, anyone?