Each year on 20 April, marijuana advocates worldwide celebrate cannabis culture, whether legal or not. In London, over 1,000 people gathered in Hyde Park last year to mark 4/20, smoking joints at the designated time while calling for legalisation.
The numbers 420 are synonymous with cannabis, but their origin is often misunderstood. A common myth claims 420 was the penal code for marijuana use in California, but fact-checking site Snopes.com reveals the code actually refers to 'obstructing entry on public land' and does not relate to cannabis in any US state.
The true story traces back to 1971, when five students from San Rafael High School in California—nicknamed the Waldos—used 420 as a secret code. They would meet at 4:20pm to search for a rumoured patch of cannabis plants near a coast guard station. Though they never found the plants, the number became a shorthand for smoking marijuana.
One of the Waldos, Steve Capper, explained that saying '420' was telepathic among friends: 'I could say to one of my friends, I’d go, ‘420,’ and it was telepathic. He would know if I was saying, ‘Hey, do you wanna go smoke some?’' The code was unknown to teachers and parents.
The Waldos associated with the band the Grateful Dead, and the term spread through their fan base. In 1990, journalist Steve Bloom attended a Grateful Dead show in Oakland and received a flyer telling the 420 story, though it inaccurately claimed it was a police code. Bloom published the flyer in High Times in 1991, and the editor, Steve Hager, built events around 420, including the Cannabis Cup.
Hager told the Huffington Post that no earlier use of 420 exists, so the Waldos are credited with its origin. 'Unless somebody can come up with something that pre-dates them, then I don’t think anybody’s going to get credit for it other than them,' he said.
