# 420 ? Wtf ?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [July 14, 2004, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994 "2004-07-14T01:07:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/1 "2004-07-14T01:07:36Z")
I just found out from my 13 year old daughter that 420 is quite a significant number based on the pot culture and commonly known by teenagers and pot smokers around the world for years. Google confirms this.
I’m really surprised that I could have been so totally unaware of this popular term.
Was I all alone in this particular ignorance?
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### Author:  [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/2 "2004-07-14T01:13:17Z")
Not at all. I hadn’t the faintest when I saw 420 threads on another message board.
I still don’t remember, I’m off to google.
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### Author:  [@Stuffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stuffy)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/3 "2004-07-14T01:16:12Z")
Yep. Just you. 😃
Kidding, I believe it’s the police code for it, but that might have been becuase of something I read recently that may in fact have said the opposite.
Yep, I in fact got it wrong relavent [snopes](http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/420.htm) link. For any one too lasy to follow the link, a group of students down the road in San Rafael, CA started to use it as slang for when they’d meet to light up.
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### Author:  [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/4 "2004-07-14T01:22:19Z")
Heh, the whole 420 lexicon is only followed by poser Stoners and the hardcore Potheads (the ones that act stoned even when they’re not). I think it gets more brouhaha than it deserves.
Besides, it’s more fun to think of one’s own terms… wanna go dreeze the shoofooballoo?
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### Author:  [@Celyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Celyn)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/5 "2004-07-14T01:24:53Z")
Ah, I had never heard of it either, until. some time ago, there was at least one thread on it on SDMB. Of course, the Search function is not pleased at being asked to search for “420”, it seems.
☹
I had some vague notion that the explanation was to do with a film or a police code, but I simply don’t know.
Here is a link.
> **[Online Menu | HIGH TIMES Cannabis Delivery](https://hightimes.com/menu/delivery/?aid=3&bid=200)**
>
> Order cannabis delivery from HIGH TIMES here on the online menu. Shop, sort and browse hundreds of products right from your phone.
> [@](#):
>
> Do you know what 420 means? Several times over the past few years, HIGH TIMES has attributed “420” to a code used by the San Rafael police department. However, the department has always denied this and I’ve come to the conclusion they are telling the truth. I was recently contacted by a group known as the “Waldos,” who claim to have originated 420 in San Rafael in 1971. The group began meeting every day at 4:20 PM after school and eventually began to use 420 as a code for marijuana so they could talk about pot in front of parents and teachers.
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### Author:  [@Stuffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stuffy)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/6 "2004-07-14T01:24:54Z")
And remember Dopers, 420/pot/marijuana/wacky tobaccy/weed/hash/grass/puff/green is illegal in the United States.
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### Author:  [@Celyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Celyn)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/7 "2004-07-14T01:28:05Z")
I can say, anyway, that I never heard it in Britain.
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### Author:  [@bughunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bughunter)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/8 "2004-07-14T01:34:20Z")
Don’t feel so dense.
I was at my hundred-and-umpteenth Grateful Dead concert when I had to ask a teenager what “4:20” on his baseball cap meant.
His reply: “Time to smoke pot, dude!” :wally
It’s not easy to be made to feel square and unhip while you’re standing in a parking lot before a Grateful Dead concert, partaking of the various and sundry chemical alterants therein, legal and not quite so. But he did it.
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### Author:  [@fishbicycle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fishbicycle)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/9 "2004-07-14T01:45:18Z")
I grew up in the '70s and was a musician to boot. No way to avoid coming into contact with people who smoked pot. I’d never heard anyone mention ‘420’ until just now. Maybe it was a regional thing?
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### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/10 "2004-07-14T01:55:44Z")
Man! What a dissapointment, I thought this was all about how you were going to go on a diet.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/11 "2004-07-14T02:02:23Z")
I think it 's a short version of “The whole 420 yards.”
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### Author:  [@kittenblue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kittenblue)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/12 "2004-07-14T02:22:11Z")
My pothead son, currently serving time for said proclivities, uses 420 in all sorts of ways…email addresses being the most common. I see it everywhere these days…and the kids think they are being so cute and clever that we won’t know what they mean! In fact, I had a guy have me engrave a clock for his girlfriend that read, “we’ll always have 4:20” !! (worst thing was, he was a guy who had assaulted my daughter and gone to jail because of it…he didn’t recognize me, and I recognized him only after I had taken his order and engraved it. I was shaking so hard when he picked it up, hoping he wouldn’t realize who I was.)
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/13 "2004-07-14T03:26:47Z")
In Ontario, Highway 420 is the short highway that joins the Queen Elizabeth Way to the Rainbow Bridge in the city of Niagara Falls. 🙂
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### Author:  [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/14 "2004-07-14T03:58:07Z")
As someone who has never smoked pot, never been offered pot and wouldn’t have the slightest idea where to get pot, and yet I still know what 4:20 means, I can’t believe you didn’t know it either!
It was a gag on the Simpsons and everything, jeez!
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### Author:  [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/15 "2004-07-14T04:24:02Z")
> [@grienspace](#):
>
> Was I all alone in this particular ignorance?
Yes. I’ve never even smoked a _regular_ cigarette let alone pot, but I know the significance of 420. Nice rock you’ve got, though 😛
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### Author:  [@yellowval](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yellowval)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/16 "2004-07-14T13:11:00Z")
The first I remember hearing it was after the Columbine shootings, which took place on April 20. There was a lot of talk then about its connection to marijuana and also that it’s Hitler’s birthday.
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### Author:  [@jay-c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jay-c)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/17 "2004-07-14T15:04:05Z")
I got my nose pierced at a shop called ‘420’. They gave us a sticker saying ‘I got pierced at 420’. It was green, and shaped like a cannibis leaf.
That’s really all I have to contribute, other than to say that even as a pre-teen I knew what it meant, and I grew up in rural Ohio.
Carry on…
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/18 "2004-07-14T15:27:43Z")
I smoked long ago and not much, but my bf back then was the connection. I had heard it. I also saw a bumper sticker recently that said
“What Would Jesus Do At 4:20?” 😃
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### Author:  [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/19 "2004-07-14T15:41:22Z")
The local rock station often announces:
“It’s 4:20…time to get Stoned!”
when they play the daily Block of the Rolling Stones.
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### Author:  [@lightingtool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lightingtool)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2004, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/420-wtf/254994/20 "2004-07-14T16:05:15Z")
At the University of Vermont, there is (was, anyway) a big unofficial gathering on April 20th at 4:20pm outside the library, of all places. My senior year they even had a band play, and people usually give out pamphlets promoting legalization. Everybody would then light up at 4:20 (outside, on the grass), thinking that the small Burlington police force couldn’t arrest _all_ of them. They were right, as far as I could tell.
I’m pretty sure I hadf heard the expression while in High School, as well.
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