Smokers Observe Grass-Roots Holiday

Like an underground religious sect, they gathered Thursday at 4:20 p.m.
sharp in living rooms and college dormitories, city parks and street
corners, lit their sacred plant and inhaled its mind-altering smoke.

The guidelines to the obscure ritual born in the Bay Area fell apart there,
but in most cases, what followed went something like this: giggling,
debating the existence of God, applying eye drops and devouring pizza.

So went another ``420,'' the so-called ``stoner New Year's,'' an annual
counterculture celebration of marijuana on April 20, or 4/20, to increasing
fanfare.

From California to Vermont, 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 say has
many medical benefits and manufacturing applications as hemp.

Anti-drug advocates say they are thinly veiled rationales to legalize a
substance most use recreationally. And police officials aware of the
holiday view it 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 many.

Even among marijuana's staunchest advocates, 420, which originated in San
Rafael about 30 years ago among teens who would smoke pot daily at 4:20
p.m., has a ways to go. For one thing, many marijuana smokers are not
exactly known for their motivation and their memorization of key dates.

``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-Amherst's Cannabis Reform Coalition.

Across the country, large-scale 420 events took place in San Francisco, New
York City, Washington, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Tampa, Fla., according
to High Times magazine.

According to editor Steven Hager, the holiday began in 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 smoke marijuana 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, which was 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 and bosses, Hager
said.

Around 1990, with so many people speaking of a 420, April 20 came to be
viewed as ``the ultimate 420.''

``Young people see 420 as an act of defiance, a symbol of freedom,'' said
Dennis Peron, a veteran medical marijuana campaigner who ran on a
pro-marijuana platform in the 1998 California governor's race.

In general, though, most observers of 420 tend to view the event as a good
excuse to get high, often in public.

``As long as the government continues to arrest marijuana smokers, 420 will
become a bigger and bigger event each year,'' said Keith Stroup, executive
director of the Washington-based National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws, or NORML.

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 Thursday, ``I really don't believe in 420 because the
press usually portrays it as a kid with a purple mohawk and a gold nose
ring smoking a joint, when the issues are way more serious than that.''