Why does everyone associate ’420’ with marijuana on April 20? Here’s what we learned.

Avi Bajpai
Updated ·2 min read

Whether you know a lot about marijuana or very little, chances are you’ve heard that the numbers 420 are particularly significant in weed culture.

But what does it mean? And why do weed aficionados hold April 20 and 4:20 p.m. so sacred?

According to Time magazine, 420 can be traced to 1971, when a group of five students at San Rafael High School in Marin County, California began meeting at 4:20 p.m. to smoke marijuana.

  • The actual numbers “420” don’t have much symbolic significance, Time reported in 2016. Instead, the students — Steve Capper, Dave Reddix, Jeffrey Noel, Larry Schwartz, and Mark Gravich — chose to get together at 4:20 p.m. because by that time, extracurricular activities were usually over.

  • The high schoolers, engaging in an activity that was strictly illegal at the time, started to use “420” as code for marijuana, Time reported. Years later, one member of the group, Reddix, got a gig working as a roadie for Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh.

By 1990, a group of Grateful Dead fans was spreading the word of the ritual by distributing flyers, according to Time, inviting people to smoke “420” on April 20 at 4:20 p.m.

  • The magazine High Times printed a copy of the flyer the next year, and from there, the association between 420 and smoking weed spread across the world, becoming an iconic piece of American culture.

  • A 2009 article in the New York Times corroborates the history of 420 reported in Time. Steven Hager, a former editor of High Times, told the newspaper that the significance of 420 dated back to the early 1970s, when a group of teenagers in Northern California began smoking marijuana at 4:20 p.m. as a matter of ritual.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that marijuana is the most widely used drug that is illegal under federal law, with more than 48 million Americans, or roughly 18% of the population, using it at least once in 2019.

Support for legalizing marijuana for medicinal use, and even recreational use, has been growing in the last several years.

  • A poll released by Elon University in 2021 showed that 54% of North Carolinians backed legalizing marijuana completely, and 73% supported legalizing medical marijuana.

  • A more recent poll from Meredith College, released Feb. 13, 2023, shows 73% of those surveyed favor legalizing medical marijuana. (The survey does not address legalizing it for recreational use).