For Some Students, 4-20 Marks Celebration of Marijuana

Every year on April 20, pot smokers get ready to celebrate. It's “National Weed Day,” a day of identifying and smoking with fellow users, and apparently promoting the legalization of marijuana. I have heard about it since the beginning of high school, and although I have never participated in it, many high school students do. It's mostly unknown about how the day originated, but high school students are participating in it for reasons all their own.

Marijuana has been around for a long time, and today it is viewed as a “normal” high school thing. It may have been seen as something only the “bad kids” did in the past, but today more people from any stereotypical high school group are participating.

“I think today marijuana is easier to get because of medical marijuana. It’s accepted more starting in junior high, so when the student gets to high school it becomes more serious. Some kids have even said they get it from their parents,” security specialist Henry Piechowski said. “Marijuana is a gateway drug, no matter what anyone says, and leads to the user trying more serious and deadly things.”

Out of the students I asked, the results were mostly split between students who would be participating in 4-20 and those who would not, and the people that said they were going to smoke were ones that do on a regular basis, or at least once a week.

“4-20 is a day where you just get together with friends and smoke a bunch of weed,” said a student who wished to remain anonymous. “I don’t know why it started, but I do it to keep the tradition going.”

When I asked pot smokers why they would be celebrating 4-20, none of them seemed to know the answer. This poses the question: Are people really celebrating 4-20 to promote legalization, or are they just doing it to go along with the crowd? This is why legalization is such a controversial subject. Do people really need marijuana for medicinal reasons and economic benefit, or do they just want to smoke weed?

“I don’t smoke weed, and I don’t really want it to be legalized either. It just gives people more of an excuse to do it, and they wouldn’t have to do it in secret anymore, so they’d be doing it everywhere else,” another student said.

The other side of the legalization debate is by legalizing marijuana it would reduce state deficits, create jobs, and make room in prisons with the lack of people there on marijuana-based charges. Marijuana could be taxed, and benefit the economy, some say.

Though there are reasons supporting both sides, 4-20 remains a controversial “holiday.” And as for high school students celebrating, I just hope that they are doing it for all the right reasons.