Calling all cars, we have a 420 in progress
April 20, 2008
Happy April 20, 2008, or in smokers terms, 420 yo! Here are some facts about America’s fastest growing holiday! Also included is the beginning of when this term entered our nomenclature.
This looks like someone is about to have a good time…
I like this one if you are in bad with your girl, this might be the way to make up for spending all that time in the bar with your buddies the night before. It is the way to show that you still care deeply for her, and you had her best interest at heart. (All but that part about macking on that chick with the mini skirt and getting a rub out in the parking lot by her… What she doesn’t know, only makes the relationship a little more spicy…lol)
Can I bum a smoke off you? How many times when asking for a cigarette, do you wish this is what they pulled out?
Forget strawberry fields forever, take pot fields for 420!
Claim: The term ‘420′ entered drug parlance as a term signifying the time to light up a joint.
Status: True.
Origins: Odd terms sneak into our language every now and then, and this is one of the oddest. Everyone who considers himself in the know about the drug subculture has heard that ‘420′ has something to do with illegal drug use, but when you press them, they never seem to know why, or even what the term supposedly signifies.
It’s both more and less than people make it out to be. ‘420′ began its sub-rosa linguistic career in 1971 as a bit of slang casually used by a group of high school kids at San Rafael High School in California. ‘420′ (always pronounced “four-twenty,” never “four hundred and twenty”) came 
to be an accepted part of the argot within that group of about a dozen pot smokers, beginning as a reminder of the time they planned to meet to light up, 4:20 p.m. Keep in mind this wasn’t a general call to all dope smokers everywhere to toke up at twenty past four every day; it was twelve kids who’d made a date to meet near a certain statue. It’s thus incorrect to deem that ‘420′ originated as a national or international dope-smoking time, even though the term began as a reference to a particular time of day.
These days ‘420′ is used as a generic way of declaring one likes to use marijuana or just as a term for the substance itself. Its earliest connotation of having to do with the time a certain group of students congregated to smoke wacky tobaccy is unknown to the overwhelming majority of those who now employ the term. Indeed, most instead believe one or more of the many spurious explanations that have since grown up about this much abused short form:
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420 is the penal code section for marijuana use in California.
Nope. Section 420 of the California penal code refers to obstructing entry on public land. The penal codes of other states list different entries for 420, but none of them matches anything having to do with marijuana.
However, on 1 January 2004 the Governor of California signed that state’s Senate Bill 420, which regulates marijuana used for medical purposes. This bill comes years after the term ‘420′ was associated with marijuana and indeed its number likely was chosen because of the existing pop culture connection. This is the tail wagging the dog, not the other way around.
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It’s not the police radio code for anything, let alone that.
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It’s the number of chemical compounds in marijuana.
The number of chemical compounds in marijuana is 315, according to the folks at High Times magazine.
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It’s the code you send to your drug dealer’s pager.
Yeah, right. All drug dealers recognize a ‘420′ page as “Please be waiting on the corner with my baggie of wildwood weed.”
Spurious etymologies and uncertain definition aside, ‘420′ has slipped into a position of semi-respectability within the English lexicon.
Free-wheeling cities annually celebrate “hemp fests” on April 20. There’s a 4:20 record label in California, and a band called 4:20. Atlanta’s Sweetwater Brewing Co. sells its 420 Pale Ale in supermarkets and opens its doors to the public at 4:20 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. New York’s 420 Tours sells low-cost travel packages to the Netherlands and Jamaica. Highway 420 Radio broadcasts “music for the chemically enhanced.” And in 2001, the forReal.org web site of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Substance Abuse Prevention put out a public service document titled, “It’s 4:20 — Do You Know Where Your Teen Is?”
420s are routinely slipped into popular movies and television shows. In Fast Times at Ridgemont High the score of the football game was 42-0. (We all know that president Palmer put an ass whooping on the other team over his car being wrecked. Had he been smoking weed, he might have been too mild mannered to respond in the appropriate way to win the ball game by such a devastating score.)
Most of the clocks in Pulp Fiction are set to 4:20 (but not all — when the kid receives the watch it’s set at 9:00. (Maybe because it had been up Christopher Walken’s anus for so long). And there are many other instances, so keep your eyes peeled.
However, as amusing as it is to tie 420 to pot smoking and hunt for it in popular movies, the number has its dark side. Hitler was born on 20 April 1889, and the massacre of 13 victims at Columbine High School in Colorado took place on 20 April 1999.
See kids… Do drugs. You will get lazy and not accomplish anything. In these cases, we wish that you had. Hitler would just be banging Eva Braun, dreaming of a master kush, instead of a master race. Trench Coat Mafia would have focused on where to get the next dime bag, instead of getting the next glock to hurt/kill.
