[420 Girl]

Colorado - Celebrated by many an avid pot smoker on the 20th day in April, yesterday's counterculture holiday "4/20" was a big hit on the CU campus as thousands gathered to the Norlin Library Quadrangle to celebrate.

Clear skies prevailed throughout the afternoon as observers of the unofficial holiday began to congregate on the field, some as early as noon. Fashion of the day included a broad array of T-shirts touting pot references -- everything from "Half Baked" to "Rehab is for Quitters" -- and enough people sporting the color green to rival St. Patrick's Day.

"This is the best day ever," said Karen, a CU political science major dressed up as a giant pot leaf. "This should happen every Sunday."

Activities picked up as the countdown to 4:20 p.m. went on. Hordes of students and pot-friendly community members clustered together throughout the field laying out blankets and tossing footballs and Frisbees. The thumping of drum circles that peppered throughout the area could be heard by passersby.

In some respects, the Boulder tradition was a commercial event. Groups of people began passing around Mardi-Gras style beaded pot-leaf necklaces in exchange for social contributions, and outdoor vendors were even selling 4/20 memorabilia to the masses -- shirts reading "Boulder 4/20" and "Colorado Puffs" -- as the day went on. The event has even garnished enough of a reputation to attract visitors from far outside of Boulder.

"We spent most of the day on Pearl Street before we headed out here," said Josh Ejtehadi, who traveled with his friend Ian all the way from Colorado Springs to attend the event. "This is my second year out here. I had heard that Jerry Garcia started it, so I knew it would be awesome."

By the time 4 p.m. rolled around, hundreds of the event's attendees had already rolled up joints and filled glass pipes of all shapes and sizes in anticipation of the most massive outdoor community smoking session of the year. Attendance was so massive, in fact, that police on duty at the event made no efforts to discourage it.

"If it was one guy smoking on Pearl Street and one police officer, that's a one-to-one ratio," said Cmdr. Brad Wiesley, Public Information Officer for the CU Police Department (CUPD). "When it's 10,000 people and 20 officers, that's a different story."

A news release from issued by the CUPD after the event stated that approximately 15 officers and six Boulder County Sheriff's deputies monitored the 420 activity that occurred on campus to support public safety -- not to enforce the laws against it.

"Given the size of the crowd that appeared on a warm spring Sunday afternoon, the focus of the police was to maintain a safe environment and discourage potentially hazardous activities," the release stated. "No citations were issued and no arrests were made."

Those in attendance did not need a watch to know the exact moment that 4:20 p.m. had struck -- because if the sudden rush of intense cheering throughout the field wasn't enough to clue them in, the massive haze of smoke that soon lifted above the crowd sure did. Festivities continued with more intensity, such as several drum circle drummers climbing trees, for the next half-hour before the crowd began to dissipate steadily by 5 p.m.

According to the CUPD summary, the event was conducted safely by those in attendance with no problems that could be linked directly to the use of marijuana.


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