Yesterday the official weed holiday fell on Easter Sunday.

In San Francisco, we are not shy about celebrating. Golden Gate Park’s Hippie Hill typically hosts weed smokers everyday of the year, but on this day, there is a parade and a huge party of cannabis enthusiasts. In 2025, SF did not permit the event to proceed. Years ago, when I had a team of researchers working for me in corporate America, a staffer was taking a holiday to be a parental chaperone for her son’s 6th grade class that was actually visiting Hippy Hill on 4/20. Can you imagine? Purposely exposing sixth graders to this lifestyle…I wonder what the teachers taught about it.

There are many stories that claim to be the origin of the 420 meaning; (IMHO, the most credible version here.) But for me, it’s been more about the time of day, and the practice, and the regularity and the ritual of partaking. Like the saying “it’s 5:00 somewhere” and then proceeding to have a cocktail/start the official “happy hour.” That was true when I was a daily stoner. I’ve been off the cannabis for almost two years now, and my thinking has changed.

Every weed dispensary I used to frequent offers huge sales, amazing promotions, and big conspicuous parties with loud musical DJs on this day. In 2024, legal cannabis sales across the US topped $18billion, according to the clip below.

News clip interviews a cannabis business founder and lobbyist about when Federal relief will come for cannabis purveyors.

But the Federal Government can still come in and raid your locally legal dispensary, arrest your staff, confiscate your inventory and your cash. Or your city government can deny your Hippie Hill permit and your annual party. Our “States Rights” hypocrisy is most evident on this issue because Cannabis is still a Schedule I drug. Right up there with heroine, and LSD. A Federal Schedule change has been proposed, but these things take inordinate amounts of time.

I can’t help but fondly reminisce over the years my recent past, when 4/20 was not as mainstream of a code – when startups would use the code for entire business departments as an inside joke, (would you believe that eBay gave StubHub this proclamation back in the early 2000s!) and only us wiser ones (high!) would get the reference. When stoners would signal the time, even when it wasn’t that time of day, in order to schedule a smoking session.

Those were the days when I felt like I was in on the joke, when I was getting away with something. Those were the days when I relished my down time, my me time, my 4:20 time. Those were the days when I could say with no irony whatsoever, that I was going to go and take my meds now. Or, that I’d forgotten to pack enough meds, and would be going to get more. Those were the days when I tracked my weed spending in a special notebook because there was a huge part of me that knew I wouldn’t be able to sustain this forever, or well, not even for much longer.

I don’t know the significance of the 4/20 weed holiday falling on Easter, except to say that Pope Francis died yesterday, just after giving his St. Peter’s Square after Easter Mass from the PopeMobile on Saturday. Surely there’s some symbolic stuff going on there, right? I bet the stoners of the world have something to say about white smoke vs. black smoke coming out of that conclave.