420

If you read the profiles of people seeking to hook-up on Craigslist or any other such site, you will bump into people suggesting that a suitable partner must be “420 friendly.”   The number 420 is code for marijuana.

According to Wikipedia, the use of 420 (four-twenty) as a coded reference for weed originated with a group of teens in San Rafael, California in the early 1970s.  The teens started meeting at 4:20 in the afternoon before setting out to try and locate a crop of marijuana rumored to be located in the area.  The use of 420 as a direct reference to marijuana stuck with the teens and then soon entered the entire counter-culture.

Now, turn your attention to present-day Colorado and, in particular, Interstate 70 which bisects Colorado running east and west for a length of 450 miles.   Recently, the highway department there, following the repeated theft of a particular roadside mile-marker sign, had to change the number.

You guessed it.

The roadside mile-marker 420 kept vanishing from a lonely stretch of highway almost as quickly as workers replaced it.  Theft of the sign escalated following the recent legalization of marijuana in the Colorado.  Likely, generations of the sign can be found in dorm rooms across the West.   To put an end to the cost and headaches associated with replacing the sign, the highway department posted a new number: 419.99.

Hopefully the code for marijuana will not change to that.

--Mitchell Hegman