The History of Cannabis Day

CANNABIS CULTURE – Cannabis Day has grown from a small gathering of enthusiastic potheads in the 1970s into a full-fledged marijuana festival and open Cannabis Farmers Market. CC presents a detailed history of Canada’s annual cannabis celebration/birthday party.

“It was tokin’ time Sunday afternoon. Despite heavy police scrutiny, about 2,000 people turned out at the provincial legislature grounds for one of the biggest marijuana legalization rallies ever staged in Alberta. The ‘smoke-in’ was intended to give city marijuana users a chance to ‘toke’ together in defiance of current marijuana laws, which organizers claim convicted 35,000 Canadians last year. While a few people did light up, the majority chose not to deliberately test the 60 policemen, many of them in plain clothes, mingling in the crowd.”

“Some tokin’ jokin’, little provokin’” Edmonton Journal, July 3, 1978

Here I was thinking I had invented Cannabis Day. It’s true that I came up with the idea of having a pot rally on July 1st, back in 1994 – on Canada Day – with “Grassroots”, the Edmonton-based cannabis legalization organization I belonged to. We called it “Cannabis Day” on our posters.

As it turns out, members of the Alberta Legalization of Cannabis Committee and the Canadian Association to Liberate Marijuana had come up with the same idea back in 1977.

Read the full story at Cannabisday.ca