It’s that time of year again — final exams are nearing, weather is warming and the ever-anticipated favorite holiday of college students is here.
Happy 4/20, everyone!
Everyone understands that April 20 is a simple excuse to get really high, but not everyone is concerned with how this tradition came to be. Hopefully, I can put to rest some of the many myths behind 4/20. It is not a commemoration of Adolf Hitler’s birthday, nor is it the amount of chemicals in marijuana and it is certainly not the time Europeans sit down and drink tea.
The most historically plausible explanation of how 4/20 began took place in California — no surprise there — in the 1970s.
A group of teenagers at San Rafael High School in California known as The Waldos would periodically go outside at 4:20 p.m. to a wall by their high school and smoke weed. Somehow, knowledge of The Waldos’ after-school activities spread across the country, and over time, April 20 became a “high holiday.”
But today, teenagers can’t be so nonchalant about smoking weed in public. Unfortunately, people are constantly getting arrested and fined for possessing or smoking weed.
Across the country, there are more than 835,000 arrests per year for anything marijuana-related. This strict enforcement is responsible for a whopping $10 billion of the nation’s taxes each year. The effort to stop people smoking marijuana leads to an unnecessary stipend and wastes the efforts of many police forces on such a non-crucial issue.
In New York, any amount of weed visible in public can result in a $250 fine and a maximum of 15 days in jail. So today while you’re celebrating, at least make sure you’re somewhere private — and that does not include the Nature Preserve.
The ongoing battle against the War on Drugs is about more than whether marijuana is dangerous. It is about the social symbolism of marijuana and how it is falsely represented as the drug of the estranged and unwanted people of America.
Marijuana is now outlawed because it is considered a hazardous narcotic drug. But it is a scapegoat. Politicians against the legalization of marijuana in the United States attempt to cover up their uneasiness with marijuana’s history by pointing its minimally psychedelic characteristics.
When the Mexican Revolution began in 1910, there was a sudden spike in Mexican immigrants into the United States. Among all of the immigrants, some were violent, inappropriate and took advantage of our country’s freedoms. They also brought over with them their homegrown drug: marijuana.
It was then that the association between unwanted Mexican immigrants and marijuana began. More than a century later, we still see this racist connection between marijuana and the violence of the Mexican Revolution.
Times have changed, but the foothold of America’s unreasonable tradition remains unyielding, not to mention the excuse for outlawing marijuana fits perfectly into the heart of American politics: lying.
If you enjoy smoking marijuana and would like to do more than just celebrate, check out www.NORML.org, an organization that works to reform marijuana laws.
Happy Holidaze!