Pubdate: Fri, 23 Feb 2001
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2001 Southam Inc.
Contact:  300 - 1450 Don Mills Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3R5
Fax: (416) 442-2209
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Author: Philip Delves Broughton

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?
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