420 Around the World
When I was a student at the
University of California at Santa Cruz, I lived on campus at
Kresge College (named after the founder of Kmart). Although I was studying there in the late 1990's, that particular set of on campus apartments was still a hotbed of
hippie and
drug culture.
Not only did I hear many of the explanations written of above for the number
420's connection with
marijuana:
- date of first lab test
- number of psychoactive chemicals in weed
- politically significant
... but I also was witness to an April 20th ritual, where all the smokers gather their stash into one room and
hotbox it (or, seal the room to conserve the smoke) for 24 hours.
Everytime a timezone would hit April 20th/4:20pm starting at the
International Date Line, they would honor that slice of the world by lighting a new bowl and passing it around.
In between new bowls, they would assuage their
munchies with
potluck vegetarian food. Yum!