Skip to content
Version 1.0.0
Sentencing Law and Policy
Part of the Law Professor Blogs Network

Seeking advice on how best to “celebrate” 4/20 day as a law professor

By Douglas Berman

420_ecard

As perhaps many readers may already know, today is so-called 4/20 day , which is described this way on Wikipedia:

April 20 (“4/20” in U.S. date notation) has evolved into a counterculture holiday, where people gather to celebrate and consume cannabis.  In some locations this celebration coincides with Earth Week.  Some events may have a political nature to them, advocating for the decriminalization of non-medical cannabis in the United States.

This webpage at NORML details how this marijuana legalization group is celebrating its favorite day:

[T]his ‘4/20’ celebration in 2010, as is NORML tradition, is a combination of both the serious and silly!

There will be dozens of major 4/20 ‘protestivals’ today from New York City to Seattle, to the expected largest one in the nation I’m speaking at in Denver Colorado.  Major newspaper articles and stories on TV will abound by day’s end. In fact whole television networks such as G4, Comedy Central, Spike and Current TV will devote some or all of their programming today to celebrating cannabis and, implicitly, the herb’s reform.

Also today, NORML launches a new advertisement for 4/20 on Times Square’s largest electronic billboard calling out New York City politicians and law enforcement for having one of the highest — and most racially disparate — cannabis arrest rates in the United States.  The advertisement will run 18 times a day until late May, and will be seen by an expected 1.5 million Times Square visitors.

These protestivals and public celebrations of cannabis culture in North America is a greatly anticipated and celebratory annual event at NORML since the mid 1990s, but the serious political message of this wonderfully creative day (beyond the obvious one of ‘re-legalize cannabis now!’) for this specific year is to direct as much NORML membership and public attention as possible to donate and support the voter initiative on the ballot in California this very November that will effectively legalize cannabis for adult use, cultivation and sales.  Going into our 40th year, NORML’s staff and board of directors have made the passage of California’s voter initiative to legalize cannabis the number #1 political priority for the organization.

As I have suggested in some prior posts, I view the economic and related utilitarian/libertarian argument for legalizing marijuana to be fairly strong these days.  At the very least, I think it important and valuable for serious people in serious settings to have serious conversations about whether and how pot prohibitions should be scaled back.  Thus, I plan to “celebrate” 4/20 day by raising these issues (indirectly) in my Criminal Procedure class this afternoon.  But, as my post title suggests, I welcome other advice concerning how best to mark this day.

Some related older and more recent posts: