We’ll take a break for the serious information for a bit to provide a funny bit of history. There are many stories on how the term, 4:20 and it’s many incarnations, have come to be. It’s often used to insinuate cannabis, or the use of cannabis, and I’m often surprised at how many people who use the term have no idea how it got started.
The story is actually quite mundane. A group of young men in southern California used to meet at 4:20 every afternoon to smoke cannabis together. They started to remind each other using the time, which soon took on a more general meaning related to cannabis. Soon they used it to regularly communicate about the drug so that no one else knew what they were talking about.
Sometime later, the group happened to make some connections with the band, the Grateful Dead. They happened to share the term with the group, who latched on to it and began to use it themselves. Given the amount of influence the band had at the time, it wasn’t long before others started using the term as well. The rest is, as they say, history.
You know, it’s a lot of fun hearing the stories about how 4/20 became the calling card for the cannabis subculture. In fact, take a moment to enjoy two professionals ply their craft.