420 — Illustration of a cannabis leaf and clock showing 4:20 with the numbers 4:20 in green

420

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Published August 15, 2026

420 is a slang code for cannabis and cannabis culture, coined in 1971 by five San Rafael High School students who called themselves the Waldos. The number refers to 4:20 p.m., the time the group met at a Louis Pasteur statue to smoke, and April 20 later became the unofficial worldwide holiday for weed smokers.

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Overview

420 is a numerical code cannabis smokers use to signal weed. Depending on context, it can point to 4:20 p.m. as the daily smoke time, the date April 20 as a stoner holiday, or a random username or license plate flagged to hint at cannabis friendliness1. The term is always pronounced "four-twenty," never "four hundred and twenty," and works as a semi-private password that smokers tend to spot everywhere from film clocks to freeway mile markers1.

The code carries a specific origin story tied to five California teenagers in the early 1970s, though the number was misattributed for decades to police radio codes, chemical counts in weed, and even Bob Dylan lyrics2. High Times editor Steven Hager credited the Waldos of San Rafael High School as the coiners in 1998, and later news coverage ran with that account5. By 2000, when the San Francisco Chronicle site SFGate ran a feature on the term, 420 was firmly locked in as the standard shorthand for cannabis and its unofficial April holiday4.

Origin & Background

Platform
San Rafael High School, California (offline) / Grateful Dead scene (spread) / High Times magazine (mainstream)
Key People
The Waldos
Date
1971

The term traces back to autumn 1971, when a group of San Rafael High School students in northern California came into possession of a hand-drawn map that supposedly pointed to a marijuana crop at Point Reyes, west of San Francisco1. The five teenagers called themselves the Waldos because they hung out by a wall on campus, and they made plans to meet at 4:20 p.m. after football practice to drive out and hunt for the plot1. They never found the crop, but the meeting time gave them their code phrase, first "4:20 Louis" (referencing the campus statue of Louis Pasteur where they gathered), later shortened to just "4:20"5.

"We were smoking a lot of weed at the time," Dave Reddix (aka Waldo Dave) told the BBC, adding that "half the fun was just going looking for it"1. Waldo Steve (Steve Capper) has defended the group's claim over the years, telling reporters the Waldos showed old letters and other physical items to High Times as proof they were the originators3.

How It Spread

The 420 code stayed underground through the 1970s and 1980s, passed stoner to stoner until it caught a break through the Grateful Dead scene2. Members of the band lived in San Rafael and knew people who knew the Waldos, so the term slipped into Deadhead vocabulary and traveled with the touring parking lot community1.

In December 1990, then High Times reporter Steven Bloom was walking through the Deadhead parking lot before a Grateful Dead show in Oakland when someone handed him a yellow flyer that read "We are going to meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais"2. The flyer included a backstory for the term and promoted a smoke session for April 20, 19912. High Times printed the flyer, kept referencing 420 in later issues, and formally credited the Waldos as the inventors in 19985.

On April 20, 1995, the Cannabis Action Network staged the first annual 4/20 Ball at Maritime Hall in San Francisco, running from 4:20 p.m. to 4:20 a.m.5. By 2000, when SFGate ran "Stoner Chic Traces Origin To San Rafael," thousands of people were gathering on college campuses, in city parks, and on mountaintops every April 20, including Ann Arbor's Hash Bash and Marin County smoke-outs on Mount Tamalpais4. In April 2005, Something Awful forum member Kirtaner registered 420chan.org, which grew into an imageboard focused on cannabis culture and pro wrestling5.

How to Use This Meme

People typically use 420 three ways: as a time (meeting at 4:20 p.m. to smoke), as a date (April 20 as a smoking holiday), and as a general tag that something is weed related, whether that's a username, license plate, or price1. The number often shows up as an inside joke in film and TV set dressing, with fans pointing to the clocks in Pulp Fiction reading 4:20 and the freeway 420 mile marker signs that get stolen so often that California's Department of Transportation replaced one with a 419.99 sign to discourage theft1. Saying "it's 4:20 somewhere" is a common convention among smokers to justify lighting up at any hour.

Frequently Asked Questions