110 Fun Facts About Marijuana

What did the five San Rafael high-schoolers credited with coining '420' in 1971 call themselves?

The Waldos, after the wall outside school where they hung out. High Times first passed on a flyer's claim that 420 began as a police code, and only in 1998 acknowledged the five friends as its inventors.

The first '420' meet-ups were code-named '4:20 Louis' after a school statue of which famous Louis?

Louis Pasteur. The friends, all athletes, met at his statue once practice was over to hunt for an abandoned cannabis crop with a map from the man who planted it; after several failed searches, the code shrank to '420'.

The spread of '420' beyond San Rafael in the 1970s and 80s is credited to followers of which band?

The Grateful Dead. One of the coiners worked as a roadie for bassist Phil Lesh, and the code went on tour: by 1990 Deadheads in Oakland were handing out flyers calling a '420' gathering for April 20.

Which country became the first in the modern era to legalise recreational cannabis, in December 2013?

Uruguay. President José Mujica sold the law as a way to take the trade from drug gangs, and it is strictly for locals: only registered residents may buy, so tourists are shut out.

On 17 October 2018 which nation became the first G7 country to legalise recreational cannabis nationwide?

Canada. The first legal sales were rung up on the stroke of midnight in Newfoundland, the country's easternmost province, and the government promised pardons for people with old convictions for carrying the drug.

Which Dutch businesses may sell a customer up to five grams of cannabis?

Coffeeshops. Cannabis is still against the law in the Netherlands: prosecutors simply let small sales pass, while for decades growing it for the shops was a crime, so the front door was tolerated and the back door wasn't.

THC was first isolated in 1964 by Yehiel Gaoni and which 'godfather of cannabis research'?

Raphael Mechoulam. With no car of his own, he carried five kilos of hashish to his lab on a public bus, where fellow passengers remarked on the strange smell.

Which singer is credited with turning the Beatles on to cannabis in a New York hotel suite in 1964?

Bob Dylan. He assumed they already smoked, having misheard the line 'I can't hide' in I Want to Hold Your Hand as 'I get high'.

Which of these plants belongs to the same small botanical family as cannabis?

Hops. Cannabis and the hop vine are sister plants in the hemp family, and both are rich in the aroma oil myrcene, a big part of why a hoppy beer can smell like marijuana.

Which US presidential candidate said in 1992 that he had tried marijuana in England but 'didn't inhale'?

Bill Clinton was recalling his student days at Oxford. Barack Obama later turned the line around, saying that as a kid he inhaled, and 'that was the point'.

Which first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics led the campaign for the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937?

Harry Anslinger ran the bureau for 32 years. His act never banned the plant outright: it taxed each sale and threatened anyone who skipped the paperwork with up to five years in prison.

The Marihuana Tax Act was struck down in 1969 in a Supreme Court case brought by which LSD advocate?

Timothy Leary was arrested at a Texas border crossing in 1965 after a search found marijuana in his daughter's snuff box; the court ruled that paying the tax would have meant confessing to a crime.

The 1936 propaganda film later famous as Reefer Madness was originally released under what title?

Tell Your Children ends with a school principal pointing at parents in his audience, then straight into the camera, warning that the next victim may be 'yours', as the title fills the screen.

Who originally financed the film that became Reefer Madness?

A church group funded it as a cautionary tale. Exploitation showman Dwain Esper then bought the film, cut in racier shots and toured it under a sexier title.

Which organisation revived Reefer Madness in the early 1970s by screening it for laughs on campuses?

NORML. Founder Keith Stroup bought a print for $297 and showed it to laughing crowds, so a film made to scare people off marijuana ended up raising money to legalise it.

Which state was the first to legalise medical marijuana, through Proposition 215 in 1996?

California. San Francisco activist Dennis Peron conceived the measure as a legacy for his partner Jonathan West, after seeing marijuana ease West's final illness.

Which US state was the first to decriminalise cannabis possession, in 1973?

Oregon. Its 1973 law cut the penalty for holding an ounce or less to a fine, much like a traffic ticket, and ten more states had followed by the end of 1978.

In November 2012 which two states became the first in the US to vote to legalise recreational marijuana?

Colorado and Washington. The drug stayed illegal under federal law, and only in August 2013 did the Justice Department tell both governors it would not challenge their new laws.

Colorado's Amendment 64 earmarks the first $40 million a year of marijuana tax for what?

Public school construction. The amendment only ordered the tax, so Colorado voters had to return in 2013 to approve the 15% excise that feeds the school building fund.

The 1970 US Controlled Substances Act placed cannabis in which category?

Schedule I put cannabis beside heroin and LSD as a drug with no accepted medical use, a stricter tier than the Schedule II given to cocaine and methamphetamine.

What did Nixon's Shafer Commission on marijuana recommend in 1972?

Decriminalise personal possession of small amounts: chairman Raymond Shafer told Congress the criminal law was 'too harsh a tool', but Nixon, who had appointed the panel, rejected its advice.

Anandamide, the first cannabis-like chemical found to be made by the body, takes its name from a Sanskrit word meaning what?

Bliss, from the Sanskrit ananda. The molecule locks onto the very brain receptors that THC does, and exercise raises its levels, which may be what gives runners their 'high'.

The High Times Cannabis Cup, founded in 1988, was first held each November in which city?

Amsterdam, where visiting judges could sample the entries openly. The cup ran there for more than twenty years before Dutch police raided it for the first time.

High Times magazine (1974) was conceived as a one-off parody of which magazine?

Playboy. Founder Tom Forçade, a pot smuggler, put cannabis plants where the centrefold would be, and the one-off joke was such a runaway hit that it became a monthly.

Which 2008 comedy follows a process server and his marijuana dealer on the run after witnessing a murder?

Pineapple Express. Producer Judd Apatow got the idea from Brad Pitt's stoner in True Romance: he wanted to follow that character out of his apartment and watch bad guys chase him.

Hashish is made by collecting and compressing which part of the cannabis plant?

Resin glands, the sticky hairs known as trichomes. Hashish also gave English the word 'assassin', from an Arabic nickname for a medieval sect, though there is no evidence its members used the drug.

Comedy duo Cheech & Chong, an American and a Canadian, first met in which city?

Vancouver. Cheech Marin had gone north to avoid the Vietnam draft, and joined an improv troupe that Tommy Chong was running out of a strip club his family owned.

How do Cheech and Chong unknowingly smuggle marijuana across the border in Up in Smoke (1978)?

In a van built from it: the film calls the stuff 'fiberweed', and when the van catches fire outside a rock club, the smoke pours in and wins the pair's band the contest.

Which Olympic swimmer lost a Kellogg's sponsorship in 2009 after a photo showed him inhaling from a marijuana pipe?

Michael Phelps. USA Swimming also suspended him for three months after he admitted that the photo, taken at a student party, was real.

Which country became the first EU member to legalise cannabis for personal use, in December 2021?

Malta. Adults may carry seven grams and grow four plants at home, yet lighting up in public still brings a fine, and the only legal sellers are non-profit associations.

Which country became the first major EU state to legalise recreational cannabis in 2024?

Germany. Adults may carry 25 grams and grow three plants, but the licensed shops the coalition had promised were left out: beyond home growing, the only legal supply is members-only growing clubs.

In 2022 which government announced it would give away one million free cannabis plants to households?

Thailand. The giveaway marked a new rule that let households grow cannabis as medicine; at the time, smoking it for fun was still against the law.

Which American sprinter missed the Tokyo Olympics after a positive test for marijuana wiped out her win at the 2021 trials?

Sha'Carri Richardson. She said she had used it to cope after a reporter told her that her biological mother had died; the ban lasted a single month, but it cost her the 100 metres.

Rastafari treat the smoking of ganja as what?

A sacrament: Rastas call it 'the holy herb' and argue that the Bible itself endorses it, citing verses from Genesis and the Psalms.

The word 'marijuana' is believed to have entered English in its current form from which language?

Mexican Spanish, where the word's own roots are a mystery. Americans long called the plant cannabis; the Spanish name is said to have spread in the 1930s because campaigners wanted it to sound foreign.

The Greek word 'kannabis' is thought to come from the language of which horse-riding steppe nomads?

The Scythians, though dictionaries allow that the word may be Thracian instead. Germanic tribes probably borrowed the same word early on, and their version became the English 'hemp'.

Which Greek historian, writing around 440 BC, described nomads throwing hemp seed onto hot stones in felt tents?

Herodotus. Archaeology seems to bear him out: charred hemp seeds have turned up in ancient steppe burials, among them a frozen tomb at Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains.

Which everyday English word for a heavy woven fabric is derived from 'cannabis'?

Canvas comes from a Latin word meaning 'made of hemp': the cloth was long woven from hemp, ships' sails included, and it kept the plant's name though most canvas is now cotton or linen.

Under the 2018 US Farm Bill, hemp is cannabis with no more than what percentage of THC by dry weight?

0.3%. The limit counted only one form of THC, so a booming trade grew up selling other intoxicating compounds made from legal hemp and labelled simply as hemp products.

Besides sativa and indica, which third cannabis species do some botanists recognise?

Cannabis ruderalis is a short wild plant from Russia and eastern Europe that flowers by age, not by day length, so breeders cross it with stronger strains to make 'autoflowering' hybrids.

What makes cannabis dioecious?

Male and female flowers grow on separate plants, so growers weed out the males: kept from pollen, the females stay seedless and far more potent, the crop sold as 'sinsemilla'.

In which country's Pamir Mountains did 2,500-year-old tombs yield some of the earliest clear evidence of cannabis smoking?

China. Wooden burners in the Jirzankal Cemetery held residue unusually rich in THC, a sign that mourners may have sought out especially potent plants to burn at funerals.

Which famous scientist, writing as 'Mr. X', praised marijuana in the 1971 book Marihuana Reconsidered?

Carl Sagan. He wrote that the insights he had while high were real ones, but kept the essay anonymous all his life; his friend Lester Grinspoon, the book's author, named him only after his death.

Marinol, an FDA-approved THC capsule, is prescribed for chemotherapy nausea and what else?

Appetite loss in HIV/AIDS: the capsule puts marijuana's famous 'munchies' to work, since its THC acts on the part of the brain that controls appetite as well as nausea.

Sativex, GW Pharmaceuticals' cannabis mouth spray, is licensed mainly for which disease?

Multiple sclerosis. The UK licensed the spray in 2010 for the muscle stiffness the disease causes, yet many patients still could not get it, because local health bodies refused to pay for it.

Charlotte Figi's family used the CBD strain Charlotte's Web to treat what?

Epileptic seizures. Charlotte had been suffering up to 300 a week; once the oil cut that to a handful a month, families with sick children began moving across the country to get it.

Which mythical emperor is credited with inventing the plow and with an ancient herbal that lists cannabis?

Shennong, the 'Divine Farmer', is said to have tested medicines on himself, swallowing as many as seventy poisons in a single day.

Which New York mayor commissioned the 1944 report that found marijuana far less dangerous than federal officials claimed?

Fiorello La Guardia. Doctors from the New York Academy of Medicine found no link to addiction, violent crime or harder drugs; the federal narcotics chief dismissed their work as unscientific.

Bhang, a cannabis drink, is most famously shared across north India during which Hindu festival?

Holi. The drink stays legal because the 1985 narcotics law bans other parts of the cannabis plant but not its leaves, so government-approved shops can sell bhang for the festival.

In one Hindu legend, which god made cannabis his favourite food after sheltering beneath the plant from the sun?

Shiva. In this telling he had stormed off into the fields after a family quarrel; tasting the leaves so refreshed him that he became known as the Lord of Bhang.

Which country's Supreme Court decriminalised recreational cannabis in June 2021 after Congress missed deadlines?

Mexico. The court had first called the ban unconstitutional in 2018 and kept extending the deadline for a new law; when a bill stalled again, the judges voted 8-3 to strike the ban down themselves.

Which word for cannabis did Dutch settlers in South Africa borrow from the Khoikhoi people?

Dagga. The Khoikhoi word probably first named a similar local wild plant; it now means cannabis, which South Africa's top court ruled in 2018 that adults may grow and use in private.

Which former Beatle was jailed in Tokyo in 1980 after customs officers found marijuana in his luggage?

Paul McCartney. Customs found nearly half a pound in his bags as he landed for a Wings tour of Japan; the concerts were cancelled, and he was freed without charge and deported.

Which president asked Congress to end criminal penalties for possessing an ounce of marijuana?

Jimmy Carter. He told Congress in 1977 that penalties for possessing a drug should not do more damage than the drug itself, noting that states which had dropped them saw no jump in smoking.

Which of these cannabis products usually delivers the most concentrated dose of THC?

Hash oil. Solvents such as butane wash the active compounds out of the plant, and the extracts sold as 'wax' or 'shatter' can top 80% THC, far beyond anything the raw flower holds.

Which jazz great recorded the 1920s tune 'Muggles', named after a slang word for marijuana?

Louis Armstrong, who used the drug for much of his life. 'Muggles' was jazz-age slang for marijuana decades before the Harry Potter books gave the word an entirely new meaning.

In what form did Dumas and fellow members of Paris's Club des Hashischins take their hashish in the 1840s?

Eaten as a green paste, a spiced jam called dawamesk. The psychiatrist Jacques-Joseph Moreau handed it out at the monthly sessions to study a state he believed resembled madness.

Which actor was arrested in Kentucky in 1996 for planting four hemp seeds to challenge the state's marijuana law?

Woody Harrelson. The protest was meant to show that the law treated industrial hemp like the drug; four years later a jury needed less than half an hour to acquit him.

A large US study found users of which of these drugs most likely to become dependent?

Nicotine: about two in three users became dependent. The two legal drugs topped the list, with alcohol on 23%, ahead of cocaine, and cannabis came last on 9%.

What milestone did a 2022 Gallup poll record about American smoking habits?

More Americans smoke marijuana than cigarettes: 16% against 11%, the lowest cigarette figure since Gallup first asked in 1944 and far below the 45% who smoked in 1954.

Which cereal maker dropped swimmer Michael Phelps as a sponsor in 2009 after a photo showed him using a bong?

Kellogg's walked away within months of his record eight gold medals in Beijing. USA Swimming also suspended him from competition for three months.

Which celebrated American scientist secretly wrote a 1971 essay praising marijuana under the pseudonym 'Mr. X'?

Carl Sagan wrote that cannabis had helped inspire some of his work and heightened his senses. His friend Lester Grinspoon disclosed the secret to a biographer only after the astronomer died.

Which English word comes from an Arabic nickname, tied to hashish, given to a medieval Nizari Ismaili sect?

Assassin derives from hashīshīn, a nickname Europeans met during the Crusades. They believed the sect killed while intoxicated on hashish, but no evidence shows its members used the drug.

Which brewing ingredient comes from a plant in the hemp family, Cannabaceae, making it a cousin of cannabis?

Hops and hemp are the two most economically important members of the family. Most of its roughly 170 species are hackberry trees.

Which Bay Area punk trio, once called Sweet Children, renamed itself after local slang for smoking marijuana?

Green Day dropped the name Sweet Children to avoid confusion with another local band, Sweet Baby. The singer later called the replacement 'the worst band name in the world'.

Ross Rebagliati won, lost and regained an inaugural Olympic gold in which sport after a positive cannabis test?

Snowboarding's first giant slalom champion got his medal back within two days, because cannabis was not yet officially banned by the IOC. The ban followed two months later.

Which country singer, a frequent guest of the Carters, is said to have smoked marijuana on the White House roof?

Willie Nelson was welcome enough at the Carter White House that in 1980 he sang a duet with First Lady Rosalynn Carter at a concert on the South Lawn.

Which carmaker's boss tweeted in 2018 about taking it private at $420 a share, allegedly as a nod to cannabis culture?

Tesla's Elon Musk tweeted that funding was 'secured' for the buyout. The SEC sued, and the settlement cost him his seat as chairman of the board.

Which former Beatle was jailed in Tokyo in 1980 after customs officers found marijuana in his luggage?

Paul McCartney had arrived for a Wings tour with about 8 ounces of cannabis in his suitcase. He was held for more than a week, then deported without charge.

Which jazz trumpeter, a heavy marijuana smoker, recorded a tune called Muggles after a slang word for the drug?

Louis Armstrong spent nine days in jail in 1930 after an arrest outside a club. He nonetheless called marijuana 'a thousand times better than whiskey'.

Which 1992 US presidential candidate said he had tried marijuana in England but 'didn't inhale'?

Bill Clinton gave the answer in a March 1992 television interview, adding that he 'didn't like it' and 'never tried inhaling again'.

Which rapper and producer named his 1992 debut solo album The Chronic after slang for high-grade cannabis?

Dr. Dre made the album after leaving N.W.A and Ruthless Records in a financial dispute. It doubled as a launch pad for a then-emerging Snoop Doggy Dogg.

Which rock band took its name from slang for a marijuana joint after a friend teased the members about their smoking?

The Doobie Brothers all thought the name was 'dumb' and meant to use it for only a few early gigs. They never came up with anything better.

Which singer-songwriter is credited with introducing the Beatles to cannabis in a New York hotel suite in 1964?

Bob Dylan was brought to the suite by the journalist Al Aronowitz that August, in the middle of the band's month-long American tour.

Whose 1954 cookbook made cannabis sweets famous with a recipe for 'Haschich Fudge' supplied by a friend?

Alice B. Toklas got the recipe from her friend Brion Gysin. The first American edition left it out, although the British edition printed it.

In the Netherlands, licensed outlets where the sale of small amounts of cannabis is tolerated go by which name?

Coffeeshops may not sell alcohol or hard drugs. Licensing them was introduced in the 1970s for the explicit purpose of keeping hard and soft drugs apart.

Which 2008 comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco is named after the rare marijuana strain its heroes smoke?

Pineapple Express was an invented strain when the film came out. Life then imitated art, and growers gave the name to a real one.

Which European country decriminalised the personal possession of every drug, cannabis included, in a 2001 reform?

Portugal adopted the policy to curb HIV, because about half of new cases came from injecting drugs. People caught with drugs are referred to a Dissuasion Commission.

In Musical Youth's 1982 hit Pass the Dutchie, reworked from a song about a cannabis pipe, what is a 'dutchie'?

A cooking pot, the patois term for a Dutch oven, replaced the 'kouchie' of the Mighty Diamonds original. The label wanted a radio-friendly hit, so every obvious drug reference was written out.

A 'blunt' is cannabis rolled in the emptied wrapper of which tobacco product, named after the Phillies brand?

A cigar is hollowed out and refilled with cannabis, wrapped in its own tobacco leaf. A joint, by contrast, is rolled in paper.

Which rapper had a 2001 hit with Because I Got High, a list of plans abandoned after smoking cannabis?

Afroman wrote the song in only a few minutes. It took off after being played on The Howard Stern Show and passed around the internet.

Which actor played the perpetually stoned surfer Jeff Spicoli in the 1982 comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High?

Sean Penn's surfer helped popularise the word 'dude'. The script came from Cameron Crowe, who had gone undercover as a student at a San Diego high school.

Which actress played Nancy Botwin, the suburban widow who turns marijuana dealer in the Showtime series Weeds?

Mary-Louise Parker played the role from 2005 to 2012. Jenji Kohan's dark comedy sends the Botwin family ever deeper into illegal activity.

Which comedian co-wrote and starred in the 1998 stoner comedy Half Baked, playing a janitor named Thurgood?

Dave Chappelle wrote it with Neal Brennan. In the plot, friends sell cannabis taken from a medical lab to bail out a pal who killed a police horse by feeding it junk food.

In a 2004 stoner comedy, friends Harold and Kumar spend a whole night trying to reach which burger chain?

White Castle licensed its name to the filmmakers in 2002 and sold tie-in products. On screen, the nearest branch turns out to have been replaced by a 'Burger Shack'.

Which actor broke through as Wooderson, the older hanger-on in the 1993 comedy Dazed and Confused?

Matthew McConaughey was a film student when he talked his way into a part meant to be small and cast locally. He became the film's breakout star.

Which reggae star's casket held his red Gibson guitar, a Bible and a stalk of cannabis at his 1981 state funeral?

Bob Marley's Bible lay open at Psalm 23, and the stalk was placed in the casket by his widow, Rita.

Which former Wailer released the pro-cannabis album Legalize It in 1976, after its title track was banned in Jamaica?

Peter Tosh predicted in a 1978 interview that 'herb will become like cigarettes'. Another ex-bandmate issued a solo album the same year, Blackheart Man.

Which heavy metal band opens its 1971 marijuana tribute Sweet Leaf with a looped recording of the guitarist coughing?

Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi was coughing on a joint he was sharing with Ozzy Osbourne when the tape caught him. The title came from a slogan on an Irish cigarette packet.

Which funk star's 1978 single Mary Jane is a thinly veiled love song to marijuana?

Rick James often performed it beside stage props shaped like giant joints, then lit a real one. The track has been sampled many times in rap, pop and R&B.

Pusher Street, long famous for its open cannabis trade, ran through the Christiania commune in which country's capital?

Denmark's Freetown Christiania began in 1971 as a squatted military base in Copenhagen. In 2024 residents and police shut most of the trade down and physically dug up the street.

Which North African country, where cannabis farming in the Rif was long tolerated, became a leading hashish producer?

Morocco's sultan gave several Rif tribes the privilege of growing cannabis in 1890. The crop was banned nationwide in 1956, and a 2021 law licensed it for medical and industrial use.

Which New England state was first to legalise recreational cannabis through its legislature, not a ballot measure?

Vermont has no ballot initiative process, so reform had to pass the legislature. Its 2018 law, unlike those of earlier legalising states, made no provision for commercial sales.

Which country's voters narrowly rejected legal recreational cannabis in a 2020 referendum held with a general election?

New Zealand voted 50.7% against and 48.4% in favour, on the same day as a referendum on euthanasia.

Which Pacific Northwest city hosted Hempfest, billed as the world's largest annual pro-cannabis gathering, from 1991?

Seattle's event began in 1991 as the Washington Hemp Expo, a gathering of about 500 people. It grew into a three-day rally and concert drawing more than 100,000.

Which arm of the US government made the 1942 film Hemp for Victory, urging farmers to grow hemp for wartime rope?

The Department of Agriculture later denied that any such film had been made. Proof resurfaced in 1989, when activists donated two recovered tapes to the Library of Congress.

Which Swedish naturalist first classified Cannabis sativa in 1753, choosing a Latin epithet that means 'cultivated'?

Carl Linnaeus described a single species. In 1785 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck added a second, noting its poorer fibre but greater utility as an inebriant.

Which American sprinter missed the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for cannabis at the US trials she had just won?

Sha'Carri Richardson had won the 100 metres in 10.86 seconds, but the result was annulled. She accepted a one-month suspension after completing a counselling programme.

Which future US president smoked marijuana as a schoolboy with friends who called themselves the 'Choom Gang'?

Barack Obama later called his high-school drug use his greatest moral failure. He wrote that he had used drugs to push questions about who he was out of his mind.

Which sitcom staged its teenagers' basement smoking sessions as 'The Circle', with the camera panning from face to face?

That '70s Show never showed anyone actually smoking, nor any bongs or rolling papers. Thick smoke, frequent coughing and an extreme wide-angle lens did the work.

Students at Stanford and MIT set up a cannabis sale around 1971, 'the seminal act of e-commerce', over which network?

ARPANET connected the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to MIT. The journalist John Markoff gave the deal its nickname in his book What the Dormouse Said.

In which Asian kingdom, where television was legalised only in 1999, was wild cannabis traditionally fed to pigs?

Bhutan's farmers saw the prolific plant mostly as fodder to fatten pigs. Some authorities trace local awareness of it as a drug to the arrival of television.

Which European country's Kanepi parish put a cannabis leaf on its flag after the design won an online poll?

Estonia's parish most likely takes its name from kanep, the local word for cannabis, recalling the area's history of making clothes from hemp fibre. The leaf design drew 12,000 votes.

Activist John Sinclair's sentence for two joints inspired which annual Ann Arbor cannabis rally, first held in 1972?

Hash Bash began on April 1, 1972, weeks after Michigan's Supreme Court struck down the law that had been used to convict him.

Which hemp activist, honoured with a cannabis strain in his name, wrote the 1985 book The Emperor Wears No Clothes?

Jack Herer self-published the book, which argues that hemp is a renewable source of fuel, food, fibre and medicine. Admirers called him the 'Emperor of Hemp'.

Which heat-driven reaction turns the THCA in raw cannabis into psychoactive THC when the plant is smoked or baked?

Decarboxylation speeds up sharply with temperature: half the THCA is consumed in 30 minutes at 100 °C, but in about 2 minutes at 140 °C.

Which comedian consumed cannabis every day for 30 days in the 2007 documentary Super High Me?

Doug Benson first abstained for a cleansing period so that the two states could be compared. The title and poster parody the 2004 fast-food documentary Super Size Me.

The teenagers who coined '420' in 1971 met after school to hunt for what, guided by a treasure map?

An abandoned cannabis crop was the prize, and its grower had drawn the map. After several failed searches, the meeting time lived on as a code word for smoking.

Which Cheers actor was arrested in Kentucky in 1996 for symbolically planting four hemp seeds to challenge state law?

Woody Harrelson phoned the county sheriff in advance and planted the seeds with a CNN crew filming. He was released on $200 bail the same day and later acquitted.

Hippie Hill, long a gathering place for April 20 cannabis celebrations, lies within which San Francisco green space?

Golden Gate Park's slope sits close to Haight Street and was a focal point of the 1967 Summer of Love, when police took a permissive stance towards drug use there.