In 1971, a group of teenagers from San Rafael High School in California met up at 4:20 pm, the time they were dismissed from detention, to smoke joints nearby a Louis Pasteur statue. By default, the term 420 (four-twenty), would come to signify most pot smokers’ lighting hour, and even extended into the countercultural weed holiday known as Four Twenty, celebrated on the 20th of April.

I wasn’t familiar with this term until I turned up at school on the 20th of April a few years ago, only to have my friends throw ‘420′ puns at me, whilst everyone else was shouting ‘Happy 420!’, and rushing back home just before the end of the day,to indulge in their herbal habits, I never actually knew so many girls at my school were into smoking until then. Being the noob that I often am, I decided to look it up, it turns out it’s a holiday that is taken quite seriously by a few people.

Every year, about 10 000 students from the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado gather on 4/20 and light up, despite warnings and threats from the university police, the numbers grow every year. In New Zealand, students from the University of Otago, meet under a walnut tree at 4:20 on 4/20 to smoke doob openly as an act of ‘protest’.

So it was no surprise today when I logged in to whichever popular social networking site it is that cripples my productivity these days, to find my whole page flooded with 420 greetings. It was a mess of weed puns. Even one kid I went to college with who never had any grade below a B and listened to Bach on repeat was part of the green frenzy. Apparently it’s a social drug.

Happy 4/20!!

WORDS AND ILLUSTRATION: SOULK!D