MARIJUANA ADVOCATES POINT TO SIGNS OF CHANGE

SAN FRANCISCO -- On Monday, somewhere in New York City, 420 people
will gather for High Times magazine's annual beauty pageant, a
secretly located and sold-out event that its sponsor says will "turn
the Big Apple into the Baked Apple and help us usher in a new era of
marijuana freedom in America." Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This
Image Kevin Moloney for The New York Times

David Perleberg sold pro-marijuana T-shirts at the forum, including
one that shows the university's buffalo mascot inhaling.

They will not be the only ones partaking: April 20 has long been an
unofficial day of celebration for marijuana fans, an occasion for
campus smoke-outs, concerts and cannabis festivals. But some
advocates of legal marijuana say this year's "high holiday" carries
extra significance as they sense increasing momentum toward
acceptance of the drug, either as medicine or entertainment.

"It is the biggest moment yet," said Ethan Nadelmann, the founder and
executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance in Washington, who
cited several national polls showing growing support for
legalization. "There's a sense that the notion of legalizing
marijuana is starting to cross the fringes into mainstream debate."

For Mr. Nadelmann and others like him, the signs of change are
everywhere, from the nation's statehouses -- where more than a dozen
legislatures have taken up measures to allow some medical use of
marijuana or some easing of penalties for recreational use -- to its
swimming pools, where an admission of marijuana use by the Olympic
gold medalist Michael Phelps was largely forgiven with a shrug.

Long stigmatized as political poison, the marijuana movement has
found new allies in prominent politicians, including Representatives
Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Ron Paul, Republican of
Texas, who co-wrote a bill last year to decrease federal penalties
for possession and to give medical users new protections.

The bill failed, but with the recession prompting bulging budget
deficits, some legislators in California and Massachusetts have gone
further, suggesting that the drug could be legalized and taxed, a
concept that has intrigued even such ideologically opposed pundits as
Glenn Beck of Fox News and Jack Cafferty of CNN.

"Look, I'm a libertarian," Mr. Beck said on his Feb. 26 program. "You
want to legalize marijuana, you want to legalize drugs -- that's fine."

All of which has longtime proponents of the drug feeling oddly
optimistic and even overexposed.

"We've been on national cable news more in the first three months
than we typically are in an entire year," said Bruce Mirken, the
director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, a reform
group based in Washington. "And any time you've got Glenn Beck and
Barney Frank agreeing on something, it's either a sign that change is
impending or that the end times are here."

Beneficiaries of the moment include Norml, the National Organization
for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which advocates legalization, and
other groups like it. Norml says that its Web traffic and donations
(sometimes in $4.20 increments) have surged, and that it will begin a
television advertising campaign on Monday, which concludes with a
plea, and an homage, to President Obama.

"Legalization," the advertisement says, "yes we can!"

That seems unlikely anytime soon. In a visit last week to Mexico,
where drug violence has claimed thousands of lives and threatened to
spill across the border, Mr. Obama said the United States must work
to curb demand for drugs.

Still, pro-marijuana groups have applauded recent remarks by Attorney
General Eric H. Holder Jr., who suggested that federal law
enforcement resources would not be used to pursue legitimate medical
marijuana users and outlets in California and a dozen other states
that allow medical use of the drug. Court battles are also
percolating. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
heard arguments last Tuesday in San Francisco in a 2007 lawsuit
challenging the government's official skepticism about medical uses
of the drug.

But Allen F. St. Pierre, the executive director of Norml, said he had
cautioned supporters that any legal changes that might occur would
probably be incremental.

"The balancing act this year is trying to get our most active, most
vocal supporters to be more realistic in their expectations in what
the Obama administration is going to do," Mr. St. Pierre said.

For fans of the drug, perhaps the biggest indicator of changing
attitudes is how widespread the observance of April 20 has become,
including its use in marketing campaigns for stoner-movie openings
(like last year's "Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay") and as
a peg for marijuana-related television programming (like the G4
network's prime-time double bill Monday of "Super High Me" and "Half Baked").

Events tied to April 20 have "reached the tipping point in the last
few years after being a completely underground phenomenon for a long
time," said Steven Hager, the creative director and former editor of
High Times. "And I think that's symptomatic of the fact that people's
perception of marijuana is reaching a tipping point."

Mr. Hager said the significance of April 20 dates to a ritual begun
in the early 1970s in which a group of Northern California teenagers
smoked marijuana every day at 4:20 p.m. Word of the ritual spread and
expanded to a yearly event in various places. Soon, marijuana
aficionados were using "420" as a code for smoking and using it as a
sign-off on fliers for concerts where the drug would be plentiful.

In recent years, the April 20 events have become so widespread that
several colleges have urged students to just say no. At the
University of Colorado, Boulder, where thousands of students
regularly use the day to light up in the quad, administrators sent an
e-mail message this month pleading with students not to "participate
in unlawful activity that debases the reputation of your university
and degree."

A similar warning was sent to students at the University of
California, Santa Cruz -- home of the Grateful Dead archives -- which
banned overnight guests at residence halls leading up to April 20.

None of which, of course, is expected to discourage the dozens of
parties -- large and small -- planned for Monday, including the
top-secret crowning of Ms. High Times.

In San Francisco, meanwhile, where a city supervisor, Ross Mirkarimi,
suggested last week that the city should consider getting into the
medical marijuana business as a provider, big crowds are expected to
turn out at places like Hippie Hill, a drum-happy glade in Golden Gate Park.

A cloud of pungent smoke is also expected to be thick at concerts
like one planned at the Fillmore rock club, where the outspoken
pro-marijuana hip-hop group Cypress Hill is expected to take the
stage at 4:20 p.m.

"You can see twice the amount of smoke as you do at a regular show,"
said B-Real, a rapper in the group. "And it's a great fragrance."
Next Article in US (5 of 17) A version of this article appeared in
print on April 20, 2009, on page A13 of the New York edition.