Hundreds join pot rally on Colo. campus

BOULDER, Colo. -- Protesters demanding that marijuana be legalized marched onto the University of Colorado on Friday, testing the school's determination to push the annual April 20 pot celebration off campus.

The protesters waved signs and a few appeared to be smoking marijuana as they entered the campus. They chanted, "Roll it, smoke it, legalize it."

Only a few dozen marchers crossed onto the university from an adjacent street, but others joined in as they made their way through the campus. By the time the protesters halted on a grassy field near a science building, the crowd appeared to be in the hundreds.

A handful of Boulder city police officers, some in SWAT gear, watched from a corner of the field but made no immediate move on the crowd.

The protesters avoided the Norlin Quadrangle, where last year's rally attracted more than 10,000 people. The university spread stinky fish fertilizer on the quadrangle early Friday and declared it closed, surrounding it with yellow tape and stationing about two dozen officers there. That effort appeared largely successful.

Three people were arrested for trespassing when they walked onto the quad and refused to leave. At least one other person was ticketed for marijuana possession on campus.

The yellow tape was removed and officers withdrew shortly after 4:20 p.m., the traditional time for marijuana advocates to light up.

In past years, the April 20 rally at the University of Colorado, which has more than 30,000 students, was one of the largest on any campus in the nation. Administrators were determined to fend off this year's event and dispel an image that the school was a pot-happy party palace.

The number 420 has been associated with marijuana use for decades. Its use as code for marijuana spread among California pot users in the 1960s and spread nationwide among followers of the Grateful Dead.

Like most counterculture slang, theories abound on its origin. Some say it was once police code in Southern California to denote marijuana use. Others trace it to a group of California teenagers who would meet at 4:20 p.m. to search for weed. Yet the code stuck for obvious reasons: Authorities and nosy parents didn't know what it meant.