The most special week of the year is coming up for the stoner tribe with the celebration of 420, the international cannabis day.
The history of 420: why is world weed day celebrated on 20 April?
To honour the holy plant and celebrate life, we are running a 420 special with some seriously interesting articles on the blog.
Even though the term 420 is more than familiar to most fans of cannabis, there is still a fair bit of misinformation floating around this popular day.
If you are a stoner from the cradle you probably already know that 20 April is when the plant gets honoured worldwide, and you might even know part of where the day comes from.
But if you do not know the history and origins of 420, or you have only been told the odd detail in passing, you have landed on the right article.
The police code theory (which is false)
Truth be told, the way this blessed tradition spread is every bit as interesting as where it came from. There are several theories, and we are going to go through them all together.
In the early nineties people thought 420 started somewhere in San Rafael, California, at the end of the seventies. The number was said to come from a code used by the region's police to refer to weed.
Locals started using the expression to talk about weed, although it does not actually come from any police code but from a group of friends who met up to smoke at 4:20.
The Waldos, San Rafael, 1971
It all started in San Rafael, when a group of five high school friends known as the Waldos coined the term back in 1971.
Although Californian lawmakers and historians have gone out of their way to back the theory that it is not connected to anything in particular, this group of friends has proof that they were the first to use the term.
The story starts with a mate who had a brother in the Coast Guard. The mate let them know he would no longer be able to look after his plot of plants near the Point Reyes Peninsula Coast Guard station.
They decided to go looking for the plantation themselves. The Waldos were athletes, so they agreed to meet at the Louis Pasteur statue outside the school at 4:20, once training finished.
In later interviews the Waldos have said they never imagined that cannabis smokers all over the world would celebrate this day as the result of a trip into the woods at Point Reyes.
From that day on they started saying 420 as a code for anything to do with the plant in their own slang.
How Grateful Dead took it to the whole world
After the hippie bubble burst in San Francisco at the end of the sixties, some members of The Grateful Dead moved to the hills of Marin County, in San Rafael.
That place was ground zero for counterculture and cannabis worship. The Waldos met the band at a rehearsal room on Front Street, where they used to practise.
"They used to use the phrase 'Hey, 420' to go and smoke, so it started spreading through that community."
Grateful Dead toured the world throughout the seventies and eighties, playing hundreds of shows a year, and that is how the term ended up spreading worldwide.
How to celebrate it
In case 20 April catches you without any gear, our smoking accessories collection has everything you need: rolling papers, tips, grinder and rolling trays.
And if you would rather celebrate it without the high, we have CBD flowers and CBD hash. The day belongs to the plant, not to THC.
Head over to The Smoker's Guide to see the rest of the articles.
