420: How a Teen Treasure Hunt Became a Global Cannabis Movement

 If you’ve ever wondered where the expression 420 came from, then today’s your lucky day. Obviously, with it being 4/20 today, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to take a look back, and a look forward with Emerald Village Executive Director Scott Schmidt, WeHo’s cannabis advocate. 

Before there was ever a 67 there was 420, and its story starts in a high school parking lot in Marin County. It’s 1971, and five teenagers have a hand-drawn map to an abandoned cannabis crop somewhere near Point Reyes. They call themselves the Waldos. They agree to meet every afternoon at 4:20 by a Louis Pasteur statue on the campus of San Rafael High School, drive out to the coast, and hunt for the forbidden plant.

They never do find the treasured crop, but “420” stuck as shorthand, and it didn’t stay private for long. In a way, it was the ultimate viral moment way ahead of its time. And considering the location and the era, it’ll come as no surprise to hear the phrase got picked up in the Grateful Dead orbit. It was then carried by roadies and fans who spread it through the 1970s and 1980s across the country. High Times magazine makes first mention of it in the 1990s. And there you have it — the old April 20th becomes the new 4/20.

For decades it’s been an underground holiday. Tolerated in some places, prosecuted in others. California’s Proposition 215, which passed in 1996 and legalized medical cannabis, started moving things. Proposition 64 in November 2016, which legalized recreational use statewide, moved them faster.

West Hollywood Moves First

The City didn’t sit on that. West Hollywood wrote cannabis regulations quickly after legalization and wrote them more permissively than most California cities were willing to. Public consumption lounges were allowed here when they weren’t allowed almost anywhere else. The stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard running through what got branded the Rainbow District became the Emerald Village, a formally designated cannabis district. Dispensaries opened. Lounges followed. An advocacy infrastructure built up around them.

West Hollywood’s connection to medical cannabis isn’t necessarily about being first, that definitely belongs to San Francisco and Denis Peron’s San Francisco’s Cannabis Buyers Club. It’s more about what came after Prop. 215, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 was passed.The City had to decide if they were going to allow access and if so, how they would manage it. They adopted a dispensary ordinance and kept the footprint limited, treating it like a land-use issue that had to be managed. It hasn’t always been easy. WeHo dispensaries were raided back in 2007 and 2011 and 2014.

That history was on Scott Schmidt’s mind last week in Bilbao, Spain, where he addressed the University of Barcelona Cannabis Hub Conference at Bizikaia Aretoa as executive director of Emerald Village. His argument was that West Hollywood’s two defining chapters, gay liberation and cannabis legalization, aren’t separate stories. They’re the same story.

“Because of our independence, West Hollywood has been able to take a leadership role in two of the most prominent global civil rights movements of our time, cannabis legalization and gay liberation, showing what the two have in common and what each movement can learn from the other,” Schmidt said.

Coming Out of the Shadows

Schmidt pointed to the Santa Monica Boulevard reconstruction as the moment the comparison crystallized for him. When gay and lesbian nightlife moved off backstreets and onto sidewalks, he said, something shifted in how Californians saw the community.

“By coming out into the sunlight, gays and lesbians in California showed the world that we were just like everyone else, bridging all types of divides, including race, age, class and ethnicity,” Schmidt said.

Cannabis is in the same place now that the gay community was then, he said. The path forward is the same one too.

“When we talk to others and present cannabis as normal, cannabis begins to become normal,” Schmidt said. “For too long we have been living in the shadows. It’s time to let the sun shine in.”

He closed with a line borrowed from another California activist tradition, then made it his own.
“Sunshine is a disinfectant, and its light is in each of us,” Schmidt said. “The one tried and true strategy that cannabis can take from the gay liberation movement is simple, and it is something that each of us in this room can do today. Come Out for Cannabis.”

From Amsterdam to Berlin to the Rainbow District

The Bilbao speech capped a busy week on the international cannabis circuit. Earlier, Emerald Village co-hosted walking tours of Amsterdam coffeeshops and Berlin’s cannabis heritage with the Cannabis Chamber of Commerce and NORML’s Ian Rassman. In Berlin, Emerald Village ran the “West Hollyweed Lounge” at the International Cannabis Business Conference, the only licensed cannabis consumption lounge operating at a cannabis industry B2B event.

Back home, Emerald Village has been building toward 4/20 all week. The organization partnered with journalist Adam Tschorn to track what each West Hollywood dispensary and lounge had planned for the weekend and has been posting short reels daily to its Instagram, @emeraldvillageweho.

This weekend, the organization’s public consumption diversion campaign was back in the Rainbow District. Ten thousand napkins went out to bars and nightclubs reminding guests to use licensed lounges for cannabis and not sidewalks, alleys, or other public spaces in West Hollywood.

The Waldos never did find that crop, but West Hollywood may have found something better.

Happy 4/20, WeHo.