Why Do They Call It 420? How Did the Weed “Holiday” Begin?

Eventually, Phil asked Dave’s brother if he wanted to manage a few of his bands. Dave was also hired on as a roadie, and the group continued to use 420 while they were backstage. The more people used it, the more popular it got with Grateful Dead fans and, ultimately, the rest of us.

“By the mid-1990s, we started seeing it all over,” Steve said in 2002. “We couldn’t believe it. It was on hats, T-shirts, record labels, cleaning solutions, all over the Internet.”