Today is April twenty or 4/20 and I am sure you hearing the term 420 all over. Most people knows that means something to do with cannabis. And maybe something to do with time or a date to smoke cannabis. Or that on April 4th is the day of the year for cannabis smokers to celebrate their love of cannabis. But the question is why is 420 so important to people who use cannabis? There are many different things people say are the reasons why there is a connect between 420 and cannabis. Some things I have heard over the years include but are not limited to things like: That is how many chemicals are in the plant (there is over 400 different chemicals in cannabis but not 420 exactly), 420 started out as the police code for cannabis smoking in progress (Wrong!), or that it is because it was Hilter’s birthday (never saw this connection to cannabis but it is something anti-cannabis people use). None of these reasons or many of the other reason people come up with are not the true Origin story of how 420 became connected to cannabis.
So then what is the Origin Story of 420? Well it is not what you might expect or maybe you know it already. The term 420 has a small humble start in the early 1971. It starts with a group of teenagers that go to Rafael High School; the group of teens called them selves the waldos because they would hang out around the wall at school. The Waldos did not come up with the term intending it to become the symbol of all cannabis users world wide
What happened was on fall day in 1971 one of the Waldos gets their hands on a hand drawn map that leads to treasure. The treasure of the green kind. It was a map to a field of cannabis. As all the Waldos were athletes so they decided to meet up at the statue of Louis Pasteur that was at the front of the school at 4:20, so they could go follow their treasure map and pluck off some free buds. All day they would remind each other when they would see each other in the halls with 4:20-Louis or just 4:20. They do meet up at 4:20 and search for this hidden patch of cannabis growing somewhere in the California forests and they did this week after week. Always meeting at 420-Louis. Unfortunately they never did find the field of cannabis. But they ended up coining the phrase 420.
The term go passed around from the Waldos to their friends and the friends of friends and so on. Until it reached the Grateful Dead and they grabbed onto the term 420 and fliers would be passed around the before the concerts that said “we are going to meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420ing in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais.” This flier got into the hands of a High Times reporter Bloom. The reported grabbed this flier and in 1991 issue of High Times reported his findings on 420, exposing the term 420 to the broader cannabis culture. The flier even came with a back story of how the term 420 can about. Not the story of the Waldos but one about how it was the police code for smoking cannabis…This was an incorrect back-story as California never had a police code of 420 in the 70’s. The Waldos have been able to prove their story with old letters, notes and even an old flag all with 420 referencing 420.
Now that the true story of where the term 420 came from and remember to:
“Spread Cannabis Knowledge!”
Marc /|\
Article originally published on 04/20/2016 on my FibroMan blog/
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Our Governor Paul Lepage has been the major Road block to enacting the law that we voted on. The bill has been butchered and several thing have been taken away from Mainers. Including a reduction in plant count and the elimination of cannabis social clubs for example. Maine is now going to be a better place as he is leaving office at the end of this year and hopefully with his departure the road block to retail sales will be lifted.
Both the Maine House and Senate have voted on H.P 1199 L.D 1719 and after several changes to the bill the passed it. This bill only needs to be signed into law by the Governor of Maine Paul Lepage. He has 10 days to sign it or veto it. Gov. Lepage has vowed to veto the bill even though it passed with a number of votes that could easy over turn a veto. As the goal prior to sending the bill to the Governor that it should be veto proof. How did they make it veto proof? The made the bill a money grab and reduced the rights the bill allowed. Hoping that would entice the Governor into signing the bill.
I am a disabled Navy veteran and have been unable to work due to my injuries obtained while serving. Basically what happened to me was I was servicing oxygen equipment on a Navy aircraft and when finished I slipped down the steps that lead up to the plane. This fall caused me to get a chronic pain condition known as fibromyalgia. This is why I’ve called myself FibroMan if that was not obvious.
There is something very wrong with the main stream medical perception on cannabis in some regions of our country. Sometimes this is in direct opposition to the current successful establishment of medical and/or adult use cannabis laws. What I am talking about is something that can effect almost anyone and that is the need for an organ transplant. My state of Maine has both a medical marijuana program and adult use laws. As one of my previous article on 
This is not an isolated event. In Utah a man, Riley Hancey age 20 was not a medical patient and had only smoked cannabis with a few friends over Thanksgiving break. Tragically in December he suffered case of pneumonia that turned into a rare lung infection. This infection caused him to need double lung transplant. The hospital ran a drug test and found trace amounts of THC in his system from when he smoked over Thanksgiving and this disqualified him from getting any organ transplant at the University Hospital of Utah it was, “according to its policy, does not transplant organs in patients with “active alcohol, tobacco, or illicit drug use or dependencies,” spokeswoman Kathy Wilets said at the time.
I reached out and asked Garry if these things that are tested for aspergillosis and could pose a simular risk of exposers to aspergillosis are on the restricted list or might disqualify a potential organ recipient. None of them were. Cannabis saw being singled out as a perceived Gary had been on Maine’s transplant list for a kidney since 2003 and in 2010 the hospital changed it’s policy on cannabis. Maine legalized medical cannabis in 1999 and 11 years latter, they suddenly change their policy?
O’Shaughtnessy was English doctor working for the East India Company and he published his research to be able to, “Market the introduction of marijuana into western medicine.” However, he did not come to this choice easily. He did his homework. He starts by going over what parts of the world already know the effects of the plant. He details all the botanical information about the plant. He does also note that the plant is also used for making cordage in Europe. He also goes over the details of the popular uses of cannabis from the medicinal the use for intoxication in the far East. He had also taken information out of Journal de Pharmacie in published in 1810 where Napoleon’s apothecary published medicinal uses.
In his conclusion to his medical study it was the anti convulsive properties of the cannabis resin that had impacted him most; he stated, “that in hemp the [medical] profession has gain an anti-convulsive remedy of the greatest value.” He did not want the personal fame in this endeavor he wanted wide spread study of this effect and stated this as why he immediately published his results have the “most extensive and speediest trails” to be given to his new found remedy. Then concludes with his recipe for extracting and preparing the hemp resin so others could duplicate how he made the it. His discovery makes him arguably the founder of the medical cannabis movement that is still happening today as he was one of the first to bring the idea of cannabis medicine into the minds of western medicine.
Hillside Grove 