61. The Most Important 420 Event in Drug History is Not Weed Related
A super-special Saturday post
Dear Readers,
Why am I sending this to you on Saturday instead of Sunday? Well because it’s 420!!
Yippie, 420!
Go get stoned, stoners.
There are a lot of stories about the origins of 420 as a code word for weed, though this one seems the most credible (via Time Magazine):
In 1971, five students at San Rafael High School [in Marin County, CA] would meet at 4:20 p.m. by the campus’ statue of chemist Louis Pasteur to partake. They chose that specific time because extracurricular activities had usually ended by then. This group — Steve Capper, Dave Reddix, Jeffrey Noel, Larry Schwartz, and Mark Gravich — became known as the “Waldos” because they met at a wall. They would say “420” to each other as code for marijuana . . . .
Later, Reddix’s brother helped him get work with Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh as a roadie, so the band is said to have helped popularize the term “420.” On Dec. 28, 1990, a group of Deadheads in Oakland handed out flyers that invited people to smoke “420” on April 20 at 4:20 p.m. One ended up with Steve Bloom, a former reporter for High Times magazine, an authority on cannabis culture. The magazine printed the flyer in 1991 and continued to reference the number. Soon, it became known worldwide as code for marijuana.
The link between Reddix and the Dead is pretty convincing. What’s not convincing, in my humble opinion, is the explanation that the time was chosen because it was just after extracurricular activities. Everybody knows that stoners don’t do extracurricular activities.
Also 4:20 is a little too specific for the post-activities explanation. Wouldn’t you just say 4:15 or 4:30? Who meets at twenty after the hour? I’ll tell you who: Nobody!
Instead, I suspect their choice of this time had to do with a separate event that occurred at another 4:20 pm long ago. And that other event is actually exponentially more significant to the history of drugs than the later association between weed and 420.
“What was the most important event then?”
Good question!!
“Was it Hitler’s birth in 1889?”
Not a bad guess. I mean, he was born on April 20th, and he was taking cocktails of opioids and cocaine while fielding an army of speed freaks who briefly conquered half of Europe and altered the entire trajectory of world history.
Hitler’s birth is thus very likely modern history’s most important April-20th event. But “420” was originally referring to 4:20 pm, NOT April 20th (this was a later addition, as explained above). And Hitler was born at 6:30 in the evening!
So Hitler’s birth is out of the running, and thank goodness for that. Here at History on Drugs we bravely stand against Nazism in all of its permutations.
Indeed, the most important thing to ever happen at 4:20 in the afternoon in the history of drugs did NOT actually occur on April 20th. It occurred on April 19th, which means there are a lot of potential candidates out there.
"Was it related to Paul Revere’s famous 4/19 midnight ride to Lexington and Concord, a ride for which he steeled himself with rum?”
Another good guess!
But no.
“Was it the April 19, 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian headquarters in Waco, Texas, a compound that was suspected of being a meth lab as well as a den of crime and iniquity?”
Another good guess, but no.
“Was it the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building by noted speed freak and meth dealer Timothy McVeigh?”
Wrong again!!!
“Then what was it?”
Drum roll . . . (followed by a share button for dramatic effect) . . .
It was the first intentional LSD trip in world history!!!
On April 19, 1943, at precisely 4:20 in the afternoon, Albert Hofmann, a chemist at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Basel, Switzerland, dissolved 250 micrograms of LSD in water, and drank it.
“Why would he do such a thing?”
Well, because for years he’d been doing experiments with ergot, a type of fungus that grows on rye, synthesizing its molecules in sequence while looking for potentially useful qualities in each.
At some point in 1938 he completed his 25th synthesis, labeling it Lysergic acid diethylamide 25. At the time, it didn’t seem that special. No big whoop.
But five years later, on April 16, 1943, he decided to mess around with LSD-25 again, and while he didn’t ingest any intentionally, he did start to feel a little woozy while he worked. Thinking he was getting sick, he went home and got into bed. Then he started hallucinating “an uninterrupted stream of fantastic images of extraordinary plasticity and vividness and accompanied by an intense kaleidoscopic play of colors.”
When he returned to his normal senses, he of course thought, “Was zum Teufel??!!” That is, “What the fuck??!!”
He figured it must’ve been the LSD-25, so a few days later, with various assistants observing, he dissolved 250 micrograms of the stuff in water. He thought he was being conservative with that dose, and that was a reasonable assumption. I mean, 250 micrograms means 250 millionths of a gram. That would seem pretty conservative to me too. “Start low, go slow,” everyone!
But LSD-25 is among the world’s most powerful psychoactive compounds. 100 micrograms are sufficient to make you “trip balls,” as the kids say. With 250 micrograms, all bets are off.
Here’s what then happened to Hofmann, as described by Jay Stevens in his terrific Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream:
At 4:50 [Hofmann] noted no effect. At 5:00 he recorded a growing dizziness, some visual disturbance, and a marked desire to laugh. Forty-two words later he stopped writing altogether and asked one of his lab assistants to call a doctor before accompanying him home. Then he climbed onto his bicycle . . . and pedaled off into a suddenly anarchic universe.
In Hofmann’s mind this wasn’t the familiar boulevard that led home, but a street painted by Salvador Dali, a funhouse roller coaster where the buildings yawned and rippled. But what was even stranger was the sense that although his legs were pumping steadily, he wasn’t getting anywhere.
Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, Hofmann’s employer, soon made LSD available to researchers worldwide. Over the next couple of decades, the drug would radically alter not only countless psyches, but history itself, fueling a countercultural movement that would in turn inspire a conservative backlash that would eventually evolve into a ferocious crackdown called the War on Drugs, resulting in heavily militarized police forces, super-powerful drug “cartels,” mass incarceration, and much much more!
Wow!
I suspect that one of those San Rafael stoners knew the Hofmann story and chose 4:20 as the time to spark up. But that’s just speculation.
More importantly, you’ve just learned about the most important drug event to take place at 4:20 in the afternoon in the whole history of the world!! Congratulations!! Now go enjoy some weed if that’s your thing.
Have a good week, everyone.
This answers so many questions! You should have a label or tag for posts that will instantly make you more interesting and controversial at cocktail parties. (Or whatever kind of parties cook kids are doing these days.)
I have never usee LSD, but my best friend in 7th, 8th snd 9th grade was Erica Sandoz, daughter of political philosopher Dr. Eliis Sandoz and relative of the founder of Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. Thus, I am about five Kevin Bacon Units from the inventor of LSD. Also, my favorite boss and close friend Lee Hartman’s father conducted some of the MKUltra experiments on Texas prisoners. I feel much more a part of 4/20 now.