Marijuana Trivia
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110 free Marijuana trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
55 free marijuana trivia questions and answers, built for a 420 party, a dispensary quiz night or anyone who wants to know the real history behind the plant. The set covers the science (who isolated THC and CBD, why the body's own cannabinoid is named for the Sanskrit word for bliss, what makes hemp legally hemp), the history (Herodotus on the Scythians, the Marihuana Tax Act, Harry Anslinger, the Shafer Commission Nixon ignored), the laws (the first state to decriminalise, the first country to legalise, Malta, Germany, Thailand and the coffeeshops of the Netherlands) and the culture (the Waldos and 4:20, Reefer Madness, Cheech & Chong, High Times, bhang at Holi and ganja in Rastafari). About a third of the questions are easy enough for anyone who has read a headline about legalisation; the rest go deeper into court cases, chemistry and etymology and will separate the casual from the truly well-read. Nothing here is a how-to; it is a knowledge quiz about a plant that has shaped medicine, law and pop culture for thousands of years. Every answer has been checked against a reference page, mostly Wikipedia's science, law and history articles, and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
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Q 01What did the five San Rafael high-schoolers credited with coining '420' in 1971 call themselves?
The Waldos
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.
Q 02The first '420' meet-ups were code-named '4:20 Louis' after a school statue of which famous Louis?
Louis Pasteur
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'.
Q 03The spread of '420' beyond San Rafael in the 1970s and 80s is credited to followers of which band?
The Grateful Dead
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.
Q 04Which country became the first in the modern era to legalise recreational cannabis, in December 2013?
Uruguay
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.
Q 05On 17 October 2018 which nation became the first G7 country to legalise recreational cannabis nationwide?
Canada
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.
Q 06Which Dutch businesses may sell a customer up to five grams of cannabis?
Coffeeshops
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.
Q 07THC was first isolated in 1964 by Yehiel Gaoni and which 'godfather of cannabis research'?
Raphael Mechoulam
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.
Q 08Which singer is credited with turning the Beatles on to cannabis in a New York hotel suite in 1964?
Bob Dylan
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'.
Q 09Which of these plants belongs to the same small botanical family as cannabis?
Hops
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.
Q 10Which US presidential candidate said in 1992 that he had tried marijuana in England but 'didn't inhale'?
Bill Clinton
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'.
Q 11Which first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics led the campaign for the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937?
Harry Anslinger
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.
Q 12The Marihuana Tax Act was struck down in 1969 in a Supreme Court case brought by which LSD advocate?
Timothy Leary
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.
Q 13The 1936 propaganda film later famous as Reefer Madness was originally released under what title?
Q 21What did Nixon's Shafer Commission on marijuana recommend in 1972?
Decriminalise personal possession of small amounts
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.
Q 22Anandamide, the first cannabis-like chemical found to be made by the body, takes its name from a Sanskrit word meaning what?
Bliss
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'.
Q 23The High Times Cannabis Cup, founded in 1988, was first held each November in which city?
Tell Your Children
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.
Q 14Who originally financed the film that became Reefer Madness?
A church group
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.
Q 15Which organisation revived Reefer Madness in the early 1970s by screening it for laughs on campuses?
NORML
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.
Q 16Which state was the first to legalise medical marijuana, through Proposition 215 in 1996?
California
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.
Q 17Which US state was the first to decriminalise cannabis possession, in 1973?
Oregon
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.
Q 18In November 2012 which two states became the first in the US to vote to legalise recreational marijuana?
Colorado and Washington
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.
Q 19Colorado's Amendment 64 earmarks the first $40 million a year of marijuana tax for what?
Public school construction
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.
Q 20The 1970 US Controlled Substances Act placed cannabis in which category?
Schedule I
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.
Amsterdam
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.
Q 24High Times magazine (1974) was conceived as a one-off parody of which magazine?
Playboy
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.
Q 25Which 2008 comedy follows a process server and his marijuana dealer on the run after witnessing a murder?
Pineapple Express
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.
Q 26Hashish is made by collecting and compressing which part of the cannabis plant?
Resin glands
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.
Q 27Comedy duo Cheech & Chong, an American and a Canadian, first met in which city?
Vancouver
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.
Q 28How do Cheech and Chong unknowingly smuggle marijuana across the border in Up in Smoke (1978)?
In a van built from it
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.
Q 29Which Olympic swimmer lost a Kellogg's sponsorship in 2009 after a photo showed him inhaling from a marijuana pipe?
Michael Phelps
Michael Phelps. USA Swimming also suspended him for three months after he admitted that the photo, taken at a student party, was real.
Q 30Which country became the first EU member to legalise cannabis for personal use, in December 2021?
Malta
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.