420 Explained...

<Thanks to ircspy.com news for this article>

If you smoke herb, tree, sherm, floyd, grass, cheeba, the chronic, wet, weed or plain old marijuana, you probably know about the magical number 420. Most of us aren't aware of its legendary points and myths of origin, until now.

Myth #1 : 420 is the police call-in code for "Possession of Marijuana" or "Drug Bust in Progress" or "Hippie Smoking Herb".

Check cobras.org for all your cop related call-in number codes. The call codes are pretty universal and 420 is not there.

Myth #2 : "Come Together" by the Beatles is 4 minutes and 20 seconds long. And if you know the lyrics, you know they were high as hell when they wrote it.

The Fab Four might have smoked a bit of shake back in the day, although the song is 4 minutes and 16 seconds long.

Myth #3 : April 20th is Earth Day, so ya gotta perpetuate the celebration and smoke a bit of Mother Earth, maaan!

Check the calendar - Earth Day has been on April 22 since 1970.

Myth #4 : THC (Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol), the element in weed that makes you high, has 420 chemicals in it.

The number of active chemicals in THC is around the 300-315 mark, depending on the strain of bud.

Myth #5 : Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer and synthesizer of LSD first dropped acid at 4:20 p.m., April 19, 1943.

Well, actually yes, he did. His notebooks can verify that. And if you wanna get all technical, he first tripped three days prior--by accident. Acid and weed are two completely separate drugs (only the U.S. Gov. considers these two the same).

Myth #6 : When the Grateful Dead toured they always stayed in room #420 of whatever hotel they were at, duuude!

Dead biographer and historian for 20 some-odd years (and author of A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead) Dennis McNally has gone on record as saying this is ridiculous...

Myth #7 : April 20 is National Pot Smokers Day.

That's true, but it's only because of all this 420 horseshit! Haha.

Myth #8 : April 20 is the last day you should plant your seeds.

This makes no sense - you can grow anytime, and anywhere.

Myth #9 : The number comes from the children's nursery rhyme "Sing A Song of Sixpence," which is all about drugs. It says, "Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie." Get it?

There is no tie-in except for the number and the word "baked." Go to writingresources.com for the real story on the bird-pie thing.

Myth #10 : In the H.P. Lovercaft short story "In the Walls Of Eryx," the protagonist talks of a hallucinatory plant with "shaggy stalk, spikey leaves" and the ability to seemingly stop time. When the slowed-down time in the story is checked, it's 4:20.

This is the coolest-sounding, coincidental myth, but the story has time checks throughout.

To conclude: High Times editor Steve Hager, the pot periodical wrote a history in 1998, which found that the 420 phenomenon started in San Rafael High School in California, in 1971. A dozen stoners who hung and smoked together heard of a secret patch of homegrown growing nearby. They decided to meet at 4:20 at the campus statue of scientist Louis Pasteur to begin their search for the secret field o' weed. They never found it. But they started incorporating the time and number 420 into their language to slyly talk about smoking in front of teachers and parents. They then told two friends who in turn told two friends and so on and so on....Further documentation is at 420.com.

Source: newhavenadvocate.com