POT SMOKERS OUT AND PROUD FOR 4/20 HIGH HOLIDAY

Forget Hippie Hill. For thoroughly modern marijuana smokers in the
San Francisco Bay area, the hip place to celebrate their movement's
high holiday this year was the inside of stretch Hummer parked
outside a pot gardening superstore where entrepreneurs mingled with
investors and a city councilman.

Marijuana legalization advocates across the country are expected to
light up during Tuesday's annual observance of 4/20, the
celebration-cum-mass civil disobedience derived from "420" - insider
shorthand for cannabis consumption. IGrow, a 3-month-old cultivation
equipment emporium, got a 24-hour jump start on the festivities by
sponsoring a "420 Eve" festival Monday afternoon.

Several hundred revelers lined up outside the 15,000-square-foot shop
security guards kept them at bay until 4:20 p.m. waiting for the
chance to revel in their drug of choice's rising commercial clout.
Inside the gates, they perused booths stocked with pipe-shaped
lollipops and specialty fertilizers, entered a medical marijuana
delivery service's raffle for an oversized joint and toured a
53-foot-long portable grow room with a starting price of $60,000.

"I wouldn't have thought we would be able to consume on site,"
marveled John Corral, 19, of San Jose, after he obtained a wristband
that gave him access to the event's two "vapor lounges," the one
inside the Hummer and another inside a companion Range Rover limousine.

Two years ago, before he had a doctor's recommendation to smoke pot,
Corral commemorated 4/20 on Hippie Hill, the Golden Gate Park
promontory where an earlier generation of pot aficionados made their
stand. IGrow has arranged to have a doctor working at the store three
days a week to evaluate people seeking to become medical marijuana
patients, and a handful of those at the 420 Eve party were able to
snag last-minute appointments.

Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for
the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said the drug's steady movement from
counterculture indulgence to mainstream acceptance will be evident
elsewhere in the United States Tuesday, when four cable television
channels have scheduled "a good chunk of programming to 420."

St. Pierre said that with the terms "marijuana" or "cannabis"
regularly showing up on the top Internet searches and a measure to
legalize the plant's recreational use appearing on as many as four
state ballots in November, it's clear that groups like his, which has
lobbied to decriminalize marijuana since 1970, are no longer blowing smoke.

"There is a large mainstreaming of all of this," he said. "Some of it
is happening because of natural forces and some of it is happening
because commercial entities looking to comport with local social
mores and values are taking advantage of this bizarre numerology."

At the iGrow event, Tom Patton of GrowOp Technology, proudly
discussed the inspiration for the "Big Bud" growing trailer he
developed with Derek Peterson, a former stock broker. Patton said he
kept hearing about pot growers who "were constantly putting up and
taking down" grow rooms built inside warehouses or residential homes
because of complaints from neighbors, fires sparked by faulty wiring
or threats of law enforcement raids.

His pot room on wheels, which comes outfitted with a security system
and technology to adjust temperature and humidity levels from an
iPhone, may not completely eliminate the last concern, but that
hasn't stopped a pair of New York bankers from investing in the invention.

"This is an enabling technology, not a hiding-out technology," Patton said.

The lure of revenue and respectability has prompted some veterans of
the marijuana wars to diversify. Joshua Freeman, a Sonoma County pot
grower, was at the 420 Eve festival handing out samples of the
specialty plant food he recently developed and is trying to market.

"We are not just a bunch of stoners sitting back on a couch playing
video games," Freeman said.