- April 20 or "
4/20 " is the unofficial holiday ofmarijuana enthusiasts — a day when it's traditional to consume cannabis in whatever form you choose. During quarantine, stoners are still planning on celebrating. - Cannabis influencer
Koala Puffs , who has over 700,000 followers, told Insider she's hosting a smoke session on Instagram Live for the digital debut of "4/20," a movie about the holiday that she's making her acting debut in. Miss Grass , a California-based cannabis brand, is usingZoom to broadcast a free 4/20 summit which features guests like Chelsea Handler and will fundraise for a restorative justice advocacy group.- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
For most Americans, April 20, 2020 will be remembered as a rough marker of a month spent quarantined. But for some, 4/20 represents a very special unofficial holiday.
"Celebrating 4/20 means smoking a lot of weed, and luckily we all are able to do that right now if we've got our hands on a stash," a 25-year-old cannabis influencer who goes by Koala Puffs told Insider. "April 20 is like our Saint Patrick's Day. Instead of going out and drinking, we smoke."
420, 4:20, 4/20 – and this year, 4/20/2020 – are hallowed signifiers of cannabis
These days, 4/20 has gone from a more covert celebration to something widely embraced in mainstream culture, as more states legalize the recreational and medical use of cannabis. For a cannabis influencer like Koala Puffs, who has over 700,000 Instagram followers and nearly 250,000 YouTube subscribers, it's an eventful day for her community of fans.
A lot of legal cannabis culture already takes place online, where cannabis influencers and brands can reach a wider audience
Koala Puffs built her social media brand off interacting with other stoners online. A typical day for her may be consuming so many edibles (marijuana-infused food) that she breaks into endless giggles while doing puzzles for a YouTube video. Or, she might film herself smoking an entire ounce and a half of weed while sitting on the toilet.
On 4/20, she's doing giveaways on Instagram and Twitter every hour, and she's doing Zoom hangouts and streaming herself on Instagram Live throughout the day. She's hosting a smoke session "pre-game" before the digital Vimeo debut of "4/20," an ensemble stoner comedy about the holiday that Koala Puffs is making her feature film debut in.
"The movie is not your usual stoner movie where everybody is baked the entire time, on a stoner adventure," she told Insider. "In this movie there are different types of stoners, from the ones who smoke every day to me and my crew, who can't get our hands on any because we're underage."
A stoner movie themed after 4/20 is one sign that the holiday is becoming more mainstream, and so is the emergence of cannabis influencers like Koala Puffs. If you're wondering how someone makes money off posting videos of herself taking bong rips, she told Insider that cannabis brands are usually eager to partner with one another, but she still experiences difficulties getting mainstream brands – like the one that makes her phone case – to work with her.
Marijuana is legal for adults over 21 to use recreationally in 11 states, including in California and the entirety of the West Coast, where both sources Insider spoke to for this story are based. Despite the legal trend moving the US closer to full acceptant of pot, evidence shows marijuana smoking and vaping makes the lungs more vulnerable to infection and makes smokers and vapers more susceptible to COVID-19, a possible deterrent to lighting up this 4/20.
Despite the medical risks, legal marijuana sales are booming during quarantine, and BuzzFeed News reports that cannabis enthusiasts in non-legal states are treating their dealers like essential workers, if they can.
"True stoners who have been consuming this plant for a long time are probably consuming it more than normal given that we're all home," Kate Miller, co-founder of Miss Grass, told Insider. "But I also think there's an opportunity for new consumers. In California and other states where there's a regulated cannabis program, it's considered an essential business during this pandemic. It's easier for me to get weed right now than it is to get toilet paper."
Miss Grass is an online cannabis magazine and e-commerce platform started in January 2018. Once Americans started being encouraged to self-quarantine, its leaders gathered – virtually, of course – to come up with a 4/20 plan.
The result is the "Get Good At Weed" summit, a day of free programming on Zoom starting at noon PST that includes a workshop with comedian Chelsea Handler, a panel discussion about how cannabis derivatives can be used for sex and sexual
'4/20' is a holiday intended for all cannabis users, but the rapidly growing movement could have a diversity problem
There's also a recommendation that summit attendees donate to the Last Prisoner Project, a restorative justice advocacy group seeking clemency for the nearly 40,000 US citizens incarcerated for marijuana-related offenses. The group, founded by Steve DeAngelo – who was dubbed "the father of the legal cannabis industry" – also seeks to acclimate newly freed individuals by helping them get jobs in the legal cannabis industry if they wish.
The advocacy group has recently begun fundraising for a COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund for additional support for what it believes are wrongfully incarcerated individuals, who face a greater risk in prison due to the coronavirus.
While Miss Grass seeks to educative modern cannabis consumers about restorative justice, its also an organization founded by white women, and many of the marijuana enthusiasts-turned-influencers and celebrities who are proudly, publicly celebrating 4/20 are white women, too. The problem is representative of a lack of diversity seen in US influencer spaces across the mainstream internet.
When asked about the disparity, Miller noted that there was gender and race gap in the legal marijuana industry, which began in the US in 2012, when Colorado and Washington became the first two states to legalize the recreational use of cannabis. California passed its ballot measure to legalize recreational cannabis in 2016.
"I feel like when I first entered this industry, every headline I read was like, 'This will be the first multi-million dollar industry that women are going to lead,' which is obviously a very exciting proposition," Miller told Insider. "But I think if you look at that today, it's declining month over month. It's a direct effect of being influenced by a market represented by predominantly white men in this capitalist system."
In terms of front-facing racial diversity, when stoner influencers and the cannabis industry reflect the historically marginalized groups who have been affected most by the plant's criminal status, Miller is optimistic.
"As it relates to race, it's not even what the industry looks like today, it's what the legal industry has looked like from day one," she said. "The war on drugs back in 1971 when it started, it was the biggest failure, it ruined so many lives, and it disproportionately impacted the lives of black and brown bodies. Those effects are very visible today."
"I do feel like there's a shift happening in the world right now in a good way toward diversity and inclusivity in all industries, which is especially important in cannabis given its history."
Koala Puffs told Insider her fanbase is largely women like her, in her mid-twenties age range, who are "girls like me who wanted someone to smoke with and all found somebody so we don't feel so alone." She has male fans – and those younger and older than her, too – and is observing a lot of rapid growth among cannabis enthusiasts.
"Personally, I believe cannabis has come really, really far in even the last couple of years that I've been involved, I've seen it grow so much and I'm really trying to add onto that and break down the stigma and judgment behind it," she said. "Dispensaries are opening, billboards are going up showing people that it's okay, it's acceptable, just like a bar, just like a party. I think that more and more people are coming onboard and that makes me really happy."
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