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4/20 in Wisconsin; marijuana and state law
Recreational marijuana is legal in 24 states and Washington, D.C. Another 17 states have legalized medical marijuana. So what about Wisconsin?
MILWAUKEE - Recreational marijuana is legal in 24 states and Washington D.C., and another 17 legalized medical marijuana. So what about Wisconsin?
A medical proposal backed by Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos died in February. The measure drew opposition for being too conservative in severely limiting who could have access to medical marijuana and how it would be distributed, while others faulted it for not going far enough.
Senate Republicans objected to having state-run dispensaries, while Democrats pushed for full legalization. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has voiced support for legalizing medical marijuana as a step toward full legalization.
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The proposal would have limited the availability of marijuana to people diagnosed with certain diseases, including cancer, HIV or AIDS, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, severe muscle spasms, chronic pain or nausea, and those with a terminal illness and less than a year to live.
The nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum said, while advisory referendums on legal marijuana have passed by wide margins in the state, many lawmakers remain skeptical.
Despite marijuana's current legal status in the state, there are events happening across the Milwaukee area on Saturday to celebrate 4/20.
What is 4/20?
Saturday, April 20 marks cannabis culture's high holiday – known as 4/20 or 420.
The origins of the date, and the term, generally, were long murky. Some claimed it referred to a police code for marijuana possession or that it derived from Bob Dylan’s "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35," with its refrain of "Everybody must get stoned" – 420 being the product of 12 times 35.
But the prevailing explanation is that it started in the 1970s with a group of bell-bottomed buddies from San Rafael High School, in California’s Marin County north of San Francisco, who called themselves "the Waldos." A friend’s brother was afraid of getting busted for a patch of cannabis he was growing in the woods at nearby Point Reyes, so he drew a map and gave the teens permission to harvest the crop, the story goes.
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During fall 1971, at 4:20 p.m., just after classes and football practice, the group would meet up at the school’s statue of chemist Louis Pasteur, smoke a joint and head out to search for the weed patch. They never did find it, but their private lexicon – "420 Louie" and later just "420" – would take on a life of its own.
The Waldos saved postmarked letters and other artifacts from the 1970s referencing "420," which they now keep in a bank vault, and when the Oxford English Dictionary added the term in 2017, it cited some of those documents as the earliest recorded uses.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.