Pompo

Lifting The Haze From 'High' Holiday Myths
4/18/08|Daily Campus| by Alyssa Carroll

The "stoner" superbowl, and a favorite holiday of all herbal lovers, 4/20 is a celebration of all the green glory that is marijuana. It is a day where red eyes are as common as blue, snack foods are inhaled by the pounds and tie-dye and hemp uniforms are seen all around. However, there is as much haze surrounding the history behind this holiday as the participants themselves.
Many people have no idea as to why 4/20 is the preferred spark time of the green culture, and an equal amount have only heard the urban legends. Paige Nuzzolillo, 4th-semester anthropology major, believes that 4/20 is celebrated, "because it's the police code. 420 is the police code for marijuana."

Tom Morph, 2nd-semester theater major, believes it's "because it was Hitler's birthday." Zane Roberts, 2nd-semester theater major, believes it's simply because "stoners need a holiday too." While these are all widely believed theories, none of them are actually correct.

Four-twenty is actually not a police code for anything, anywhere. In fact, California Penal Code 420 defines as a misdemeanor the hindrance of use of public lands. While 420 is actually Hitler's birthday, surprisingly the birth of this Nazi leader was not the reason that peace-and-love followers rejoice.

Other popular myths include the notion that there are 420 active chemicals in marijuana, and that Grateful Dead would only stay in room 420. However, according to About.com, there are actually only around 315 active chemicals, and according to Grateful Dead Productions spokesman Dennis McNally, that rumor is false.

In reality, according to High Times Magazine, "The term '420,' once shrouded in mystery, began as a code for marijuana among a group of students known as 'The Waldos' at San Rafael High School in Marin County, California. Throughout the 70s and 80s the term spread through the relentless touring phenomenon that was the Grateful Dead. All the while, The Waldos held small ceremonies on April 20th at Mt. Tam in Marin."

According to Steven Hager, editor of High Times, the term 420 was shorthand for the time of day the group would meet at the campus statue of Louis Pasteur to smoke pot. "Waldo Steve,'' a member of the group who now owns a business in San Francisco, says the Waldos would salute each other in the school hallway and say "420 Louis!'' The term was one of many invented by the group, but it was the one that caught on.

"It was just a joke, but it came to mean all kinds of things, like 'Do you have any?' or 'Do I look stoned?' '' He said. "Parents and teachers wouldn't know what we were talking about.''

The term took root and flourished. It spread beyond San Rafael with the assistance of the Grateful Dead and their dedicated cohort of pot-smoking fans.

The Waldos decided to assert their claim to the history of the term after decades of watching it spread, mutate and be appropriated by commercial interests. The Waldos contacted Hager, and presented him with evidence of 420's history, primarily a collection of postmarked letters from the early '70s with lots of mention of 420. They also started a Web site: Waldos.com

"We have proof, we were the first,'' Waldo Steve said. "I mean, it's not like we wrote a book or invented anything. We just came up with a phrase. But it's kind of an honor that this emanated from San Rafael."