Header Image: Marijuana Merchant Account.com
After a Women Grow event last month in New York City, we were reading up on the Story of 420 by Steve Bloom in Freedom Leaf and wanted to share the insight (as we didn't know this at all beforehand) and thought huh, interesting! There are a couple other stories about the origins of 420, but this article was deemed "how it really happened" so keep reading and use this fun fact to impress your friends while cocktailing at happy hour sometime.
There was a group of kids in 1971 (called Deadheads, for those that don't know those were avid fans and followers of the Grateful Dead band) that went to high school in a town called San Rafael, which sits just north of San Francisco, CA. They called themselves the "Waldos" and every time the group would pass one another in the hallways, they'd salute to one another saying "Four Twenty, Louie," which was a reference to the Louis Pasteur statue where they'd meet after school at 4:20 every day. This became a "thing" among other Deadheads and eventually at a Grateful Dead concert in 1990, a flyer was distributed reporting that 420 was the police code for Marijuana Smoking in Progress (though, the Waldos came forward some time later to dispel that myth).
So, while that may be the ORIGINAL story, the flyer at that '90 Grateful Dead concert explains what it really means (regardless of who actually started it as it sounds like there may be a few stories sticking)...
...this is when you meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing...take extra care that nothing is going to go wrong within that minute. No heavy winds...just get together with your friends and smoke pot..."
We know one thing... the cannabis industry is BOOMING! We're attendees and fans of watching this movement. We attend Women Grow events and are taking a keen look at the impact this is having on the cannabis startup community, and it's pretty awesome. It's definitely a movement, and it will only get bigger as time moves on.
It's a big step forward for all of wo-mankind!