[link|http://abcnews.go.com/US/myths-truths-celebration-today-420/story?id=134...|ABC News recently spoke] to HIGH TIMES executive editor, Dan Skye, about the origins and myths surrounding the emerging stoner holiday: 4/20
 
At 4:20 p.m. today—in whatever time zone they happen to be in—pot-smokers will be lighting up to celebrate an unofficial holiday whose origins are debated by stoners with time on their hands.
 
Does 420 refer to a police code for illegal marijuana use? Is it a veiled allusion to the number of chemicals in cannabis? Or maybe it's teatime in Amsterdam, the global spiritual home of marijuana smokers. Don't forget that April 20 is Hitler's birthday, so that must have something to do with it.
And how do you spell this holiday anyway—420, 4-20, or 4/20?
 
Grammarians can debate the punctuation issue, but according to Dan Skye, executive editor of High Times magazine and an expert in all things weed, the true origins of 420 have been researched and are laid out in a Wikipedia entry largely composed by High Times savants. "People tried to create their own myth about this," he says, but adds: "The start of 420 is fairly clear at this point—the kids back at San Rafael High School."

 
He's referring to some teenagers who back in 1971 reportedly invented the term, referring to the time of day when they would meet to smoke under the school's statue of Louis Pasteur. Their password for the gathering was "420 Louis." The kids were known as the Waldos, maybe because there was a wall near the statue. The term went viral the way things went viral in the 1970s, gradually over years.
 
Read the full story here: [link|http://abcnews.go.com/US/myths-truths-celebration-today-420/story?id=134...|abcnews.go.com]