Capitalist buzz builds around stoner ‘holiday’

Hoping for 800 screenings
“We’ve got 401 screenings scheduled right now” for April 20, said Chris Hyams of B-Side, an entertainment technology company that is helping market and distribute the film. “By the time of the event we expect 800.”

Hyams had to talk film producer Alex Campbell into the ploy. “My first instinct was there’s no way I’m going to give this movie away for free,” Campbell said. “I’m an independent filmmaker and I haven’t made any money on it. But he said he then got to thinking that “people are going to watch it, they’re going to love it, they’re going to buy it.”

Campbell may need the word-of-mouth action generated by the give-away as the film drew tiny audiences to one of a handful of April 11 premieres in West Coast theaters, the Admiral Twin in Seattle.

While “Super High Me” viewers queue up, officials and cops at the nation’s 420 hot spots will have to decide how to handle the crowds that descend on their campuses. Weed fanciers familiar with the scene say the fact that April 20 lands on a Sunday this year will likely mean larger crowds, not smaller ones.

In Boulder, university spokesman Bronson Hilliard said officials accept that they can’t really stop the event. “There was a period of three or four years where we were trying something different every year,” he said. “One year the sprinklers came on and it was a kind of cold day and the party was over. In 2006, we tried posting photos of students and offering reward money.” But after that plan backfired spectacularly amid threats of a lawsuit from a prominent civil rights attorney, new leadership on campus backed off.

'A silly, unnecessary event'
“This is a sort of annoyance,” Hilliard said. “It’s a silly, unnecessary event that we don’t want to make into a cause célèbre. We will have law enforcement present but we won’t have a large demonstration of law enforcement. They’re only really looking to make sure that people come and go safely and that things like overt drug dealing doesn’t happen.”

At Santa Cruz, after an attempted crackdown by university administrators and police was completely ignored by 420 participants last year, officials this year are restricting access to the rural campus. University spokesmen did not respond to repeated requests about their plans but a 900-word-plus e-mail sent Thursday to all students said: "The campus will be closed to non-affiliates during Sunday, April 20," meaning anyone who is not a student, employee or a guest "attending pre-approved campus events."

Aggressive tactics did work at the University of Vermont, Burlington, once the scene of large annual 420 observances that have since died out, according to campus police Chief Gary Margolis. Margolis said that strong police efforts were aided by involvement from student government and an alternative event called “Spring Fest.”

Douglas, of the Boulder NORML chapter, applauds the grudging tolerance now in vogue on his campus and says his group has communicated with university police and officials about each other’s expectations. He said he anticipates a crowd of 10,000 will attend this year’s event.

“I’m hoping and praying it’s going to be good weather,” Douglas said. He’s also hoping for a scene as “indescribable” as the one he saw last year, complete with “random butterfly girls … fairies with big wings running around the crowd, just ridiculous.”

Pot use is down among teens
Such comments are deeply troubling to Madras of the White House Drug office, who pointed out that marijuana use has declined about 25 percent in recent years among teens 12 to 17.

“We’ve made tremendous headway in clarifying the hazards of marijuana use and then along come these yahoos who are countering this progress with media events and with marketing events and with money-making events … money made at the expense of the brain, the body and the behavior of susceptible people,” she said.

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