The Huffington Post chased the term back to its roots and was able to
find it in a lost patch of cannabis in a Point Reyes, California
forest. Just as interesting as its origin, it turns out, is how it
spread.
It starts with the Dead.
It was Christmas week in Oakland, 1990. Steven Bloom was wandering
through The Lot – that timeless gathering of hippies that springs up in
the parking lot before every Grateful Dead concert – when a Deadhead
handed him a yellow flyer.
“We are going to meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing in Marin County at
the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais,” reads the message,
which Bloom dug up and forwarded to the Huffington Post. Bloom, then a
reporter for
High Times magazine and now the publisher of
CelebStoner.com and co-author of
Pot Culture, had never heard of “420-ing” before.
The flyer came complete with a 420 back story: “420 started somewhere
in San Rafael, California in the late ’70s. It started as the police
code for Marijuana Smoking in Progress. After local heads heard of the
police call, they started using the expression 420 when referring to
herb – Let’s Go 420, dude!”
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