‘It's a tragedy’
“It’s tragic for our country,” Dr. Bertha Madras, deputy director of demand reduction in the White House drug office, said in an interview with msnbc.com. “It is a tragedy that this is a media circus event and it does not take into account what I have seen in treatment centers, what I have seen in weeping parents who have asked me for help with their children.”

whitehouse.gov Bertha Madras

Madras, a Harvard Medical School professor and addiction researcher for 20 years before going to work for the White House in 2006, said the high potency of today’s marijuana has increased its addictive properties. More kids from ages 12 to 18 — nearly 200,000 — are in treatment across the nation for pot abuse than any other substance, including alcohol, Madras said.

April 20 is “not a special day or unique day for me,” Madras said. “It’s one more day in trying to convince people that marijuana is a harm to their present and future.”

Pot aficionados don’t see it that way. They happily use April 20 events to proselytize a herb that they say is a better recreational substance than alcohol and other drugs, and also has medicinal and other uses.

“We are just trying to educate the students about marijuana and reform marijuana laws,” said Alex Douglas, spokesman for the University of Colorado, Boulder, chapter of NORML. Douglas said that while Boulder’s 420 event is “the largest gathering of people smoking marijuana in the world,” he personally will not be lighting up at the gathering because he would like it to be taken seriously as a “huge venue for activism.”

The same goes for Mason Tvert, a Denver-based activist whose organization — the Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation, or SAFER — has helped pass two local laws aimed at ending prosecution of marijuana users. Members of SAFER believe that pot smokers cause far fewer societal and criminal problems than drinkers. The group has used 420 events “to hand out education literature on the differences between alcohol and marijuana and try to get people to talk about it.” Denver's 420 event in Civic Center Park has attracted big crowds in recent years.

But most people who attend 420 events are there to get high, judging by the photographs and videos of previous gatherings posted online. On YouTube.com, videos show throngs of people racing to light up at Porter Meadows at UC Santa Cruz last year and chanting out the countdown to 4:20 p.m. at Boulder’s Norlin Quad. Cameras then pan over the thousands of participants at each event, capturing smiling, cheering and high-fiving beneath a fog of dope smoke.

“It was really insane how many people showed up,” said Eric Hengesbaugh, 19, who filmed last year’s Santa Cruz event as a freshman on the redwood-studded campus overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Commercial connection
Such devotion to 420 festivities has grabbed the attention of filmmakers with projects about pot, or featuring it. “Totally Baked,” a mockumentary written and produced by comedian Craig Shoemaker, premiered on April 20, 2007, and is being distributed on DVD just after 420 this year.

“Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo,” a comedy featuring John Cho and Kal Penn as a pair of hapless pot smokers, is being released April 25, and will be promoted with a prominent advertising campaign and other 420 content on the High Times Magazine Web site. “Harold and Kumar’s” maker, New Line Cinema, is a Hollywood powerhouse, a Time Warner company with over $1 billion in annual revenue and deals throughout the entertainment world that include NBC and Microsoft, msnbc.com’s parent companies.

But the most ambitious 420-linked marketing campaign belongs to the makers of “Super High Me,” who are giving away DVD copies of the film to anyone who promises to air a public or private showing of it on April 20. The documentary parody of the fast-food film “Super Size Me” follows comedian Doug Benson as he first abstains from marijuana for 30 days and then smokes as much as he can for the next 30 days, taking physical, psychological and SAT tests during both periods.

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