It took me a bit to track down but this is what I could find:

To North americans, the phrease 4-20 which is pronounced fourt-twenty, means the smoking/eating of marijuana at a particular time. Where the phrase came from is unknown but today when someone says four-twenty it is general knowledge of what comes next. Smokers will get their tools ready on April 20th every year and celebrate on a global scale.

The origin of the word 4:20 as I said cannot be tracked down to a precise date however from what I gater it first became widely used in the 1970's. A group of high school students that went to "San rafael HS", located in california met eachother everyday after school at 4:20pm. To smoke pot at
the Louis Pasteur statue.

Let me know if you find anything else.

thanks for the info. i have often wondered where it came from. i thought it was the police code for cannabis.

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I was pretty positive that the 420 was started in support of Proposition 420 as the law that supports legalizing marijuana. Watch the documentary called Grass to find out the history of pot in America's government. It's an awesome documentary.

I may be talking out my butt, but I thought that's where 420 originated.
Peace and love and legalization!!!

you could be right crystal, I did a quick search on it and wiki gave me the information. It also depends the year from everything that I have seen it originated around the early 70's

I have actually done quite a bit of research on the subject of 420, and, like the OP said, its original origin is not really known. There are alot of different variations. One is that The Greatful Dead coined it, or that there is a passage in the bible (verse 4 line 20) that describes the marijuana plant. I would like to believe both of these, but they have been proven untrue. The one explination that I have heard makes the most sense to me. If you know anything about the history of LSD then you know that the creator, Dr. Albert Hoffman, and his assitant were the first humans to ever take acid for recreational purposes on a day that became infamouse as Bicycle Day. The story is that at 4:20 PM Dr. Hoffman and his assistant dosed an amount of acid, that by todays standards, is ludicrous, and spent the day riding around on their bicycles, and as a tribute to that monumentous occasion peple everywhere light up in honor of the father of LSD.

I dont think the origin of 420 will ever truly be found out, people will always tell different stories, and maybe thats what makes 420 so special.


Edit: I also know that the prop 420 story is a urban legend. I know in CA its prop 215. I may be wrong though.

420 came from fuckin way back it didnt originate in sum fuckin song or sum shit, that # goes way back to the begining of rastafarianism fuck every mutha fucka knows that

Commonly accepted origin

* Snopes.com, High Times magazine, The marijuana-Logues, and The Straight Dope claim that in the early 1970s, a group of teenagers at San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California, used to meet every day after school at 4:20 p.m. to smoke marijuana at the Louis Pasteur statue. One piece of evidence supporting an origin of the term from the time 4:20 is the fact that the number is always said "four twenty". This theory is also the most cited, and the most widely accepted.

Other possible suggested origins

* The Bob Dylan song "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35". The song contains the lyrics "everybody must get stoned" prominently throughout the song. Since twelve multiplied by thirty-five equals 420, it has been suggested that this song is the original source of the term 420 in cannabis culture.
* At some American junior or senior high schools, "after-school detention" ends at 4:20. Thus 4:20 signifies the time when the detainees are finally free to smoke after the school day.
* The term could have possibly come from H. P. Lovecraft's short story, In the Walls of Eryx, which contains the line, "My route must have been far from straight, for it seemed hours before I was free of the mirage-plant's pervasive influence... When I did get wholly clear I looked at my watch and was astonished to find that the time was only 4:20." This theory for the origin of 4:20 was first postulated on the official website for the band Tool.

Refuted urban legends

* 420 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which marijuana burns, the primary method of use. In reality, marijuana burns at or around 283 degrees.
* 420 is a police code for a drug bust or for "marijuana smoking in progress," or that 4:20 is or was the shift change for the police. In San Francisco, 420 is the police radio code for suspicious juveniles[citation needed], but it is not specific to what they are doing that is suspicious. It is unknown if any other cities/districts use this code, or what it is for.
* There are 420 chemicals in marijuana. There are actually 315.
* April 21 is the last day on which one is supposed to plant cannabis seeds. With the variety of planting regions and cannabis genetics, no such date can logically apply to all growing operations.
* April 20 is approximately the last frost in the American climate, making it time to move pot plants outdoors. In actual fact the date varies from year to year, and from region to region.
* 420 Day is celebrated as April 20th was the date of Bob Marley's death. Marley actually died on May 11, 1981.
* Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, and smoking marijuana serves to undermine Hitler's memory. As one smoker explains: "Hitler represents in sharp opposite contrast all that the marijuana-smoking community stands for." [1]
* marijuana grew wild on or near Highway 420 in Ontario in the 1960s. However, Highway 420 only gained its current name in 1972. Whether or not this is true, Highway 420 is the location for an annual legalization protest every April 20th.
* The second line of the first stanza in the children's nursery rhyme 'Sing a Song of Sixpence' reads: "Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie". This theory probably arose because "Baked" is also a common euphemism for being under the influence of cannabis.

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if you cant rollit, it aint worth havin

i smoke weed every day. doesnt even have to be at 4:20 pm it could be the am....

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I was just wondering. It's 2:52.

Can I still smoke?