Pubdate: Thu, 14 Mar 2013
Source: Westword (Denver, CO)
Column: Ask a Stoner
Copyright: 2013 Village Voice Media
Contact: http://www.westword.com/feedback/EmailAnEmployee?department=letters
Website: http://www.westword.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1616
Author: William Breathes

WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH 4/20?

Dear Stoner:

What is up with 4/20? Why is that like the St. Paddy's Day for potheads?

Nada Mota

Dear Nada: The most plausible explanation comes from Huffington Post 
reporter Ryan Grim. A story he wrote in 2009 describes how five kids 
at San Rafael High School in the early 1970s heard about a 
clandestine pot-grow operation that had been abandoned. They decided 
to meet up at 4:20 one afternoon after school to search for it. 
Although they never found the crop, they continued to use the phrase 
as a code for smoking herb. So how did this catchphrase used by a 
small group of California high-school kids spread far and wide? 
According to Grim, the missing link was the Grateful Dead. One of the 
kid's dads was friends with the band, so all of the teens were 
Deadheads by default. They began spreading the 4/20 reference around 
that community, using it when getting high with the Dead and their 
hangers-on. But the real explosion came during the band's Christmas 
1990 Oakland run, when Celebrity Stoner founder and former High Times 
editor Steve Bloom was handed a flier in the parking lot before the 
show advertising the first organized mass 4/20 gathering. The secret 
stoner event was held at Mt. Tamalpais outside of Mill Valley; Bloom 
wrote it that May, and High Times continued to use the term over the 
years. With time, it spread from herb smoker to herb smoker - until 
it developed into the annual celebration of activism and getting high 
that it is today.

Dear Stoner: If a mosquito bites you while you're smoking a joint, 
will it get high?

Buggin' Out

Dear Buggin': What a classic stoner musing! I can remember sitting 
poolside with a bong in college, wondering the same thing.

Sadly for the mosquito, there's no buzz to be had out of the active 
THC in your blood. According to a 2001 British study conducted by GW 
Pharmaceuticals, insects are among the few beings on earth that don't 
have cannabinoid receptors. Birds, fish, mussels and even sea 
urchins, for example, all have cannabinoid receptors.

But while we're on the subject of bug inebriation, it turns out they 
can get drunk - though not likely from sipping on your blood. Studies 
have shown that insects can handle as much as 25 times the amount of 
alcohol, by weight, that humans do before feeling the effects. What's 
also interesting is that bugs, like people, can be more aggressive 
toward one another when drunk. If only they'd get high instead.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom