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Pastimes : Deadheads -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JakeStraw who wrote (25018)	1/30/2001 9:52:32 AM
From: SIer formerly known as Joe B.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 49844

Pot code '420' burns into pop culture By Karen S. Peterson USA TODAY usatoday.com A quick pop culture quiz to separate the hip from the formerly hip: What does the term 420 (pronounced four-twenty) mean? If you don't know that it is an international code word for smoking marijuana -- especially at 4:20 and on4/20 -- you are not as with it as you think you are. The term floats just below the radar of many baby boomer parents who are totally clueless about the vast underground that celebrates the term. Parents will hear about it by spring. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) intends to drag the code word into the mainstream. For the first time, it will hold its annual conference on 4/20 --April 20, a day known as Stoners' New Year. ''We have scheduled the conference to coincide with 4/20, the date that has become associated in the popular culture as a special day for marijuana smokers -- sort of what 'Miller time' has become to beer drinkers,'' says its Web site, norml.org. ''We hope to build on that tradition.'' NORML's Allen St. Pierre notes that, unfortunately, 4/20/99 was the day of the Columbine school shootings, but says he believes the two were not connected. The origin of the term is a bit hazy. Some say it has been a police radio code for ''pot smoking in progress.'' But Steven Hager, editor of High Times, has traced it back to 1971, to some pot-smoking wiseacres at a California high school who met frequently at 4:20 to light up. The term caught on and was popularized in the counterculture by the Grateful Dead, Hager says. It is now ''known universally around the world by people in the (drug) culture,'' Hager says. ''And for 20 years, there have been important rituals and ceremonies that happen on April 20,'' including those on college campuses. Those observations now include some teens staying home from school. ''At most public schools, April 20 is an (unofficial) holiday,'' says John Heydinger, 16, of St. Paul, Minn. ''Kids hang out and party.'' Those who party too hearty might say they are ''420-ed,'' he says, or really stoned. St. Pierre is amazed ''by the mass commercialization that has grown up around 420. Kids can buy all kinds of stuff with 420 on it,'' including clothing through the Net and ''skateboards, surfboards, snowboards.'' Some teens say they use the term almost as a joke. ''It's like you see someone in the hall at 4:20 and say, '420, dude, ha, ha,' '' says Brady Welch, 17, of Mt. Pleasant, S.C. Teens don't make much of it at his school, says Jared Holst, 15, of Englewood, Colo. ''Kids just happen to know what it means. Someone will say when it is 4:20.'' Parents are usually oblivious to the reference, says Beth Kane Davidson, director of the addiction treatment center at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md. ''This is a whole culture with kids.'' The message is, she says, ''even if your adolescent is at home alone at 4:20, and he smokes up, he is not alone. He knows somebody somewhere else is smoking also.'' St. Pierre has some qualms about going public with the term for the NORML conference. ''As soon as it gets bandied about on the Today show, 420 will fizzle as a cultural phenomenon.''

To: JakeStraw who wrote (25018)	1/30/2001 9:52:33 AM
From: SIer formerly known as Joe B.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 49844

So how was your weekend? Mine was uneventful.