This Monday, the grounds of the Vancouver Art Gallery will again be going up in smoke as the annual 4/20 rally celebrating cannabis culture and advocating for marijuana legalization return for its 20th anniversary.
This year promises to be the largest event yet, thanks to the addition of a second stage at Robson and Howe. Organizers are expecting close to 15,000 people to take part in the annual gathering, which culminates with a synchronized smoke-up at 4:20pm.
“This is the 20th year and it’s Marc’s first year back, so it’s going to be a big one,” says organizer Jeremiah Vandermeer.
Pot activist Marc Emery, the so-called “Prince of Pot”, was released from an American prison last year after serving five years for selling mail-order marijuana seeds.
As always, the 4/20 event will feature live music, dancing troupes, burlesque performances, and more than 250 vendor booths. Among the booths will be vendors selling recreational marijuana openly, and illegally – something long tolerated by Vancouver Police.
“There’s nowhere else in the world like it,” said Vandermeer. “Even in Colorado, you can’t sell pot outdoors. Vancouver is totally unique.”
While the mood at 4/20 is always light-hearted, there is an important political message that’s being made. Despite a handful of US states having recently legalized both recreational and medicinal cannabis – including Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Colorado, and the District of Columbia – both the federal and provincial governments here at home have little interest in legalization.
“We are frustrated,” said Vandermeer. “The movement started here in BC and because of this brutal Conservative government, every issue of progressive politics in this country is being strangled. The guy in charge hates this community and doesn’t care that 70 per cent of Canadians support legalization.”
With an impending federal election in October, Vandermeer says the focus of this year’s event will be to get people voting.
“This could be the year of legalization,” he says.
While the 4/20 rally got its start in Vancouver, the concept of “4/20” was inspired by a group of high school students in the 1970s in California who would meet up to smoke pot everyday at 4:20pm.
The term “4:20” soon became ubiquitous as code for marijuana use among the “Deadhead” culture associated with the rock band The Grateful Dead.
Marc Emery and his supporters took the concept a step further with the inaugural 4/20 rally on April 20, 1995. By having hundreds of people smoke pot in public at the same time, the police would be unable to arrest them all.
“To our knowledge, no one was doing anything on April 20 for 4/20 [before our first rally],” says Jodie Emery.
In the past decade, the event has spread south of the border thanks to the Internet. YouTube videos of the annual Vancouver event have reached a new audience in the US, resulting in 4/20 events cropping up in recent years.
This year, 4/20 events are being held all around the world, with 27 rallies being held across Canada, everywhere from Toronto, ON, to Yorkton, SK.
• For more information on 4/20 Vancouver, visit 420Vancouver.com.
