Posted on 04/16/2008 7:54:40 AM PDT by jmc813
A once clandestine counterculture pot-smoking “holiday” observed each April 20 has crossed into the mainstream this year with public gatherings that will attract thousands of participants and marketing campaigns that tout a trio of marijuana-themed movies.
As anti-drug activists chafe, the so-called “420” (pronounced “four-twenty”) celebrations “are taking on a life of their own,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws, who has been working on marijuana issues for 17 years.
St. Pierre, who thought the phenomenon was peaking about 10 years ago, has instead watched it continue to grow, thanks to the commercial efforts and “a remarkable cultural push for something that is not owned by anything, that nobody profits from per se.” It is now “highly institutionalized,” he said, ticking off dozens of events tied to the date, many organized by NORML’s 140 chapters across the nation. He said he expects to do as many as 75 media interviews this year on April 20.
While there are lots of legends on the Internet and elsewhere about the origins of “420,” “4:20” and “4/20” as terms for both marijuana itself and indulging in it, the most widely accepted is that the label came from students at a Marin County, Calif., high school in the early 1970s. The young stoners reportedly would meet after classes let out, at 4:20 p.m., to share their drugs in an era when the activity was less tolerated by society – and the legal system.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
What hyperbolic nonsense.
When I saw the headline, I thought maybe someone wanted to create a holiday to honor Eugene Stoner... ;)
I'm a little surprised she didn't start going on about white women listening to jazz and sleeping with black people. Who the heck names their kid "Bertha" anyway?
It won’t be long before some nanny-Gov type on this thread starts making the pot = cocaine = heroine = hell in a hand basket argument. Wait and see.
The parents of the "Butt Sisters"?
“I’m a little surprised she didn’t start going on about white women listening to jazz and sleeping with black people.”
LOL!
Well crap, I was hoping this was going to be a holiday to celebrate the life and work of Eugene Stoner.
Not a bunch of drug addled fools and fried pies.
That would be ApRil 15, no?
Of all of the days of the year, the stoners had to pick Hitler’s birthday.
Hey, start your own holiday.
You just don't get it!
(pot x cocaine (heroine + meth) squared) / 'shrooms = hell in a hand basket.
pay attention in class
You mean it’s much stronger than the stuff from the 60’s. ;-)
One 20 round magazine at a time.
not sure but more expensive...
LESS tolerated? In the '70s?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I can remember kids sitting in parking lots on main street firing up doobies and the cops going by and keeping right on going.
I don't think it was tolerated less in the '70s.
I don’t smoke pot; never have; never will.
Don’t particulay like what pot does to people; had a brilliant roomate in college who smoked pot constantly (and listend to Little Feat, ug) who flunked out of MIT and now re-builds cars for a “living” -— lives at home at 44, never married, no prospects.
That said, I don’t care what people do to themselves.
Pot and all drugs should be legal.
Idiots will do what they do.
http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/entertainers/actors/woody-harrelson/
But I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.
— Bob Dylan
Well fine for you. I know plenty of people who never smoked pot and never will. I had a roommate once who didn’t smoke anything. He stared at sports all day on television, then finally joined a religious commune... goes there full time now and just sits, no prospects. Idiots will do what they do. ;-)
Why not? Make it whatever you want it to be about and go burn up a few hundred rounds.
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