EL 20 DE ABRIL: DÍA DE LA MARIGUANA

MIAMI, 19 de abril de 2012

Humberto J. San Pedro
Editor General

Hoy muy temprano me dijeron que mañana, viernes 20 de abril, muchos estudiantes de escuelas medias y superiores de la ciudad estarán celebrando el "Día de la Mariguana".

Hace un rato leí un artículo de AP, que ofrece estadísticas sobre el aumento del consumo de la mariguana entre los adolescentes en los Estados Unidos.

En los últimos tres años he visto, con más frecuencia de la que hubiera querido, los efectos nocivos que produce el consumo de mariguana y otros estupefacientes en los adolescentes. Y conozco muy bien los efectos nocivos que produce el ser un "fumador pasivo" de mariguana.

Todo esto es muy lamentable, pero también es muy difícil de revertir. 

Son muchos y diversos los factores que inciden en la tendencia alcista del indice de fumadores de mariguana, de los que consumen mariguana sintética que se vende sin restricción alguna en las farmacias y otros comercios, de medicamentos que solamente se venden por receta médica, como el Xanax, y medicamentos que se venden sin prescripción facultativa, como muchos jarabes para el catarro.

La falta de control de los padres, la inexistencia de legislación adecuada, la proliferación de los vendedores y revendedores y el modelo negativo que ofrecen las llamadas "celebridades", varias de las cuales han muerto por sobredosis en meses recientes, son probablemente los factores más importantes, pero no los únicos.

¿Estará la sociedad lo suficientemente consciente de adónde vamos por este camino?

NUESTRA OPINIÓN: Honestamente, no nos parece que lo esté.

April 20 is Marijuana Day; Where Did 420 Come From?

April 20 is the favorite day of the year for marijuana smokers -- after all, it is 4/20, and 420 is code for pot. But where did it come from?

There are many theories as to why 420 came to represent pot. Some say it is from a Bible verse. Others say it was police code for pot possession. Or the number of active chemicals in marijuana. Teatime in Holland? How about Hitler's birthday?

None of these theories is correct.

The real story is actually quite simple -- a group of five students at San Rafael High School in California who called themselves the Waldos would meet outside the school at 4:20 every day to smoke pot.

According to The Huntington Post, in the fall of 1971 the Waldos got word of an untended garden of marijuana. They agreed to meet at 4:20 one day to begin the search.

"We would remind each other in the hallways we were supposed to meet up at 4:20. It originally started out 4:20-Louis and we eventually dropped the Louis," Waldo Steve, who didn't want to give his real name, told The Huffington Post in 2009.

They searched for weeks for the crops. "We'd meet at 4:20 and get in my old '66 Chevy Impala and, of course, we'd smoke instantly and smoke all the way out to Pt. Reyes and smoke the entire time we were out there. We did it week after week," says Steve. "We never actually found the patch."

But a new term was born. "I could say to one of my friends, I'd go, 420, and it was telepathic. He would know if I was saying, 'Hey, do you wanna go smoke some?' Or, 'Do you have any?' Or, 'Are you stoned right now?' It was kind of telepathic just from the way you said it," Steve says. "Our teachers didn't know what we were talking about. Our parents didn't know what we were talking about."

But how did it spread beyond this group? Well, the Waldo's had connections to the Grateful Dead through other friends, and the group sometimes hung out with them in the hippie paradise of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. They used the term there, and it quickly spread throughout the community, and eventually beyond.

So there you have it -- the origin of a term that is now known worldwide.