WHAT TIME IS IT? IT'S 4:20!

OK, so I've been thinking some doing.

No, wait -- doing some thinking. Whatever.

But dude, Sunday is 4/20, and of course, every self-respecting stoner around
the world is going to get totally blazed -- completely friggin' ripped,
insanely high, toked to the max... uh, what? Sometimes I get sidetracked by
the sounds of the words, you know?

Oh, right -- 420. So do any of us really know why we're celebrating? I
high-ly doubt it. I mean, it's sure as hell not because it's Adolf Hitler's
birthday and the anniversary of the Columbine shooting. So why?

I, Smokey D. Bud, humble investigative stoner, have taken it upon myself to
plant my ass on the couch, pack a fat bowl and figure out where 420 came
from.

The best place to start would be my good ol' stoner friends. Now get this --
this is so sick: Last year on 4/20, my roommate stuck a 6-inch nug in his
afro and walked from house to house, breaking off a little piece at each
stop, like some extra-cuddly Pot Fairy.

My buds are chillin' in the basement, so after peeling myself from the
couch, I mosey down to cop a squat, and on the stairs I hear, "I love being
stoned, 'cause it's the only time I look for my glasses when they're on my
head!" Hysterical laughing ensues.

These guys are perfect, bro. They have to know. So I ask them: Where did
"420" come from?

"Isn't it the number of chemical compounds in THC?"

"No, no, I heard it's because the Grateful Dead did a song called '420
Highways' or something like that."

"Dude, it's the police code for a weed bust in some county in California. I
know it is, 'cause some guy got busted there once. It was fully raw."

"It's the police code in Eugene, too. I heard them use it."

It's my old roommate, the one with the afro.

"The cops were kicking us out of a party," he says, "and they smelled the
weed and shit, and the guy's all, 'Possible 420 at the scene,' with this
punk-ass deep voice, into his radio."

Maybe they're onto something. So I call the Eugene Police Department. There
is some confusion as I try to explain what I'm asking (dude, when isn't
there some confusion?), but then they say it seems unlikely.

"An officer would normally say, 'I'm observing marijuana smoking in
progress,'" EPD spokeswoman Kerry Delf says. "If it was actually used, it
was an anomaly -- or it could have been misheard. It's not a radio code in
California or New York, as far as I know, and it's not a radio code here."

Damn. OK, now what? After hittin' the glass again, I decide to sit in front
of the computer. You can find anything on the 'Net. Have you noticed that
your eyes get really glazed over when you, uh, stare at a computer for a
while? Yeah, me too. There are some incredible weed sites on the Web, bro.
There's a clock that tells you where in the world it's 4:20 right now
(www.420somewhere.com), and there's sites with all kind of cool shit to buy,
and... wait. What was I doing?

Right, 420! Then, all of a sudden, I find it: An article in The Los Angeles
Times last year that claims to have discovered the truth. Steve, a
47-year-old owner of a multimillion dollar business in San Francisco, is
apparently one of the infamous "slackers" from San Rafael High School in
Marin County, California. He told the Times that he and his friends started
the "420" phenomenon by accident in 1971 when they were told about a
marijuana patch growing near the Point Reyes Peninsula. From then on, at
4:20 p.m., kids would meet near the campus statue of Louis Pasteur to embark
on a daily search for the crop.

So it's not a police code. It's not about the Grateful Dead and what hotel
room they stayed in (damn, I liked that one). According to snopes.com, an
online site dedicated to urban legends, none of these rumors are true. There
are actually 315 chemicals in THC, as reported by High Times magazine.

It was just a bunch of stoner kids, like me, having fun. And look where it's
led: There's a 4:20 record label in California, and a band called 4:20. New
York's 420 Tours sells cheap travel packages to the Netherlands (hell,
yeah!) and Jamaica. Highway 420 Radio offers "music for the chemically
enhanced." And there's so much more -- if you have time to go off on a
tangent looking for it.

The 420 culture is everywhere now. At my Eastern Oregon high school, 4:20
p.m. was when the detention bell rang to let all the bad kids go for the
day. We'd run to our cars, screaming "four-twenty" as loud as our raspy
lungs could muster.

Given where it came from, it's no surprise University students have their
own 420 rituals. Rumor has it that kids in the residence halls used to wake
up at 4:15 a.m. to gather on the Humpy Lumpy Lawn for a smokeout. Now that's
dedication. Just thinking about it makes me tired. I need another bong rip.

Smokey D. Bud cannot be contacted, as he is a fictional character created by
editorial writers. The characters and situations in this column are
fictionalized for humor, while the details about the origins and use of
"420" are true. The views expressed in this column do not necessarily
represent those of the Emerald.