Marking 4/20: Most Wee Smokers Are Multitalented – Advocate

By Faustina Yaa Barnie Appiah

Lapaz, ACCRA, April 20, 2022: Cannabis is a herb, not a drug, and it should be legalized in the same way cigarettes and alcohol are legalized. Marijuana entrepreneurs of Kent village in the Greater Accra Region made this statement when they shared their views on the importance of cannabis with residents of the community.

The head of the Marijuana Entrepreneurs Club of Kent who goes by the name of simply Wyse, said this ahead of 4/20 (April 20), a date that both marijuana smokers and non-smokers recognize as a national holiday for cannabis culture.

“Why is it only cannabis smokers? What about those who abuse alcohol and cigarette?” Wyse, head of the Marijuana Entrepreneurs Club of Kent asked. “Smoking cigarettes gravely harms you and everyone around you,” he continued. “The inscription on the boxes says so, and yet we keep importing them here. Just like Tramadol, D10, and such. Is it because of the tariffs levied on them?”

Cannabis in Ghana is illegal without license from the Minister of Health, but the nation is, along with Nigeria, among the top illicit cannabis-producing countries of West Africa. In Ghana, it’s also called ‘wee’ or ‘devil’s tobacco’.

Wyse, who describes himself as a “former” media practitioner, says he’s been smoking wee for 20 years and he looks young and healthy. “When I think about certain situations, it makes me feel perplexed, so I use this to calm down my nerves. When I smoke, I feel relaxed, happy, and stress-free,” he said.

Wyse said the majority of wee smokers are multi-talented, singers, boxers, footballers, and other professionals.

“We don’t need someone to tell us to stop smoking wee; we need people to push talent, and if talent is pushed, you wouldn’t even notice that they smoke wee.”

Members of Kent Village community shared their views on cannabis.

“They are not as bad as we thought,” Frederick Apenteng, a 10-year resident said. “They don’t harm people; in fact, they protect people in this area.”

African farmers have been growing cannabis in Africa for centuries. Nevertheless, consumption of the plant for either medical or recreational purposes is banned almost everywhere on the continent. Recently, however, the growing global demand for medical cannabis has caused several African countries to rethink their cannabis cultivation laws. 

Indeed, as more and more countries worldwide legalize marijuana consumption for medicinal and even recreational purposes, the market for legal cannabis is exploding. The global market for legal cannabis is expected to reach almost $43 billion by 2024. By 2027, the demand for legal cannabis in Europe alone should hit $37 billion, up from $3.5 billion in 2019 – an almost 30% CAGR.

In 2017, Lesotho became the first country on the continent to grant an administrative license for the commercial cultivation of marijuana for medical and scientific purposes. Since then, several countries have followed suit, including Zimbabwe, South Africa, Malawi, eSwatini, Zambia, Uganda, and Rwanda. 

Ghana has also authorized cannabis production, but only for varieties with THC (the plant’s psychoactive ingredient) levels of 0.3% or less.

Some of these countries, such as Malawi and Zimbabwe, are major tobacco exporters. Policy makers hope that cannabis can replace tobacco as the country’s top cash crop, given tobacco’s destructive environmental footprint. While most countries that allow cultivation also authorize the consumption of cannabis for medical purposes, Uganda and Rwanda are currently growing the plant strictly for exports. 

In other countries where cannabis production is still illegal, such as Tanzania and Kenya, large amounts of the crop are still grown and exported. The economic incentives to legalize the already existing cannabis trade might mean that these countries’ regulations could also change. 

4/20

Over the past decade, many nations have legalized marijuana for recreational use. Most American states, including the capital District of Columbia, have permitted medical marijuana dispensaries to begin selling their products to all adults. New Jersey’s will start on April 21, 2022, the day after 4/20—a date that both marijuana smokers and non-smokers recognize as a national holiday for cannabis culture. Yet few actually know how the date got chosen.

Some say “420” is code among American police officers for “marijuana smoking in progress.” Some note 4/20 is also Adolf Hitler’s birthday. And some go as far as to cite Bob Dylan’s song “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” because 12 multiplied by 35 equals 420.

But, to put it bluntly, those rumors of the history behind how April 20, and 4/20, got associated with marijuana are false.

The most credible story traces 4/20 to Marin County, in the state of California. In 1971, five students at San Rafael High School would meet at 4:20 p.m. by the campus’ statue of chemist Louis Pasteur to partake. They chose that specific time because extracurricular activities had usually ended by then. This group — Steve Capper, Dave Reddix, Jeffrey Noel, Larry Schwartz, and Mark Gravich — became known as the “Waldos” because they met at a wall. They would say “420” to each other as code for marijuana.

The shenanigans continued long after 4:20 p.m., too. The group challenged each other to find ever-more-interesting things to do under the influence, calling their adventures “safaris.”

Later, Reddix’s brother helped him get work with Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh as a roadie, so the band is said to have helped popularize the term “420.” On Dec. 28, 1990, a group of Deadheads in Oakland handed out flyers that invited people to smoke “420” on April 20 at 4:20 p.m. One ended up with Steve Bloom, a former reporter for High Times magazine, an authority on cannabis culture. The magazine printed the flyer in 1991 and continued to reference the number. Soon, it became known worldwide as code for marijuana. In 1998, the outlet acknowledged that the “Waldos” were the “inventors” of 420.

Bloom, now the publisher of www.Celebstoner.com, has credited the people who wrote the flyer for the date’s reputation as an annual gathering of pot smokers. “They wanted people all over the world to get together on one day each year and collectively smoke pot at the same time,” he wrote in 2015. “They birthed the idea of a stoner holiday, which April 20 has become.”