420 recap

Sorry I’ve been out of touch the past few days. It’s a very busy time at the university, with only a couple of weeks left for the year. And each year in April, the students have a four-square marathon to raise money for scholarships. Four-square? Yes, the game you played in 5th grade, although our rules are a lot more interesting. This year, the students set a new record of 62 straight hours of keeping at least one four-square court active. We also had a student set a new individual record of 36 hours and 20 minutes non-stop. I did some playing, but also cooked a whole lot of sandwiches and really didn’t sleep from Wednesday to Saturday. (For those who are interested, here are some pictures of the event, which always seems to include a lot more than just four-square.)
Of course, everyone was talking about 420 on Friday, and it made me realize just how much the Drug Czar has already lost the battle to demonize marijuana (PushingBack was even more pathetic than usual, dredging up that embarrassing FDA statement a year ago (which is even more absurd than I remembered)).
I listened to radio stations where DJs spent several minutes talking about the origins of 420 and what it means, without a lick of disapproval and a fairly heavy wink. These are the same stations that run the Coast Guard ads about how you can join the service and catch all those drug smuggling scum, but the stations are playing oldies and they know that they’re not going to win any points with their listeners by demonizing pot. Everywhere I went, people were wishing each other a happy holiday. Of course, there were exceptions (like this bizarre article in the Illinois State Journal Register: Hitler’s Birthday, a Date of Terror.
But ultimately, 420 was a date of celebration — celebrating the ultimate failure of demonization.