Learn About The History of 4/20

By Budtender Lizzie Maslan

Back in the days of yore, (for me that's around 2007), when smoking pot became a thing that I did regularly, I decided that I needed to come up with a code word for smoking so that my friends knew what I was doing but everyone else was left in the dark. I wanted it to be something that I would never actually do, something that my friends knew I disliked entirely and would only do if under threat of injury or imminent death. I decided that my code word for smoking would be jogging. I don't jog. Ever. It was perfect. 

I'd call up a friend and ask him over for a quick jog once around the block, buying weed became "picking up some new running shoes," a quick couple hits between activities was "sprint training," an entire day of smoking was a marathon, and jogging equipment became a way to describe any weed paraphernalia, (pipes, bongs, papers, pokers, etc). I had people snowed. People actually thought I was an avid runner when really, I just smoked a lot of weed. Unthinking one day, I asked a new flatmate if she wanted to jog with me and she came out with her running shoes on. I passed her greens and explained my version of jogging. It's the same story with the history of 420, really. 

420joints.jpg

In the early 1970's, (someone else's days of yore), a bunch of stoner youths from a high school in California needed to come up with a code for their pot smoking shenanigans and came up with 4:20 as a mutually good time for everyone to meet up, score some weed and get high. It actually began with them getting ripped and going on Goonies-like quests to find some ready-to-harvest pot plants that were rumored to have been abandoned by a coast guard service man in some mystery plot near the military base. The Waldos, as they called themselves because they liked to hang out against a wall, never did find that weed but scored enough to keep getting baked at 4:20 each day. 420 became the Waldos way of secretly sharing their need/want/desire to smoke. 420 meant "do you have any, do you want any, or did you just?" 

Word of 420 is said to have traveled from this little town in California by way of the band The Grateful Dead, who happened to be doing real estate business with the Dad of one of those high high-schoolers. It is also noted that an older brother of the one Waldos was good friends with the band's bassist, Phil Lesh. The Waldos and older brother were reported to have used this 420 code in front of the band and when the band embarked on their national tour, they shared with audiences and friends along the way the secret stoner code they'd found in 420. Now celebrated worldwide as a kind of National Pot Smoking and Weed Appreciation Day, look for 420 deals at Higher Leaf in Kirkland & Bellevue and for gatherings all around the city. And as usual, be safe joggers. 

HIGHER LEAF 420 DEALS

$50 Phat Panda Pack
3.5g Jar + 1g Pre-Roll + 10mg Hard Candy
Joint Supply
$4.20 Grams
Salish Sativas
$100 Oz & $50 14g
$4.20 Triple Sativa Joints
Avitas
2 Cartridges for $60
Liberty Reach
$19 Jackpot Seaweed Cartridges
$25 Pure Cartridges
Zoots
Zootblast 10mg $4.20 & 30mg $8.40

Available 4/20 To 4/22 While Supplies Last!