Police: Zero Arrests and Citations at Denver 420 Festival

"Happy 4/20, everybody!" Afroman shouted to a silent stoned crowd in Denver's Civic Center Park at 4:20 p.m. on Saturday, April 20.

The muted response wasn't due to a lack of people. Although cold weather and snow may have affected the turnout, organizers estimate around 35,000 people attended the festival throughout the day. Most of the concert-goers were just too busy smoking or struggling to light their joints — and none of them were busted by police for cannabis consumption.

According to the Denver Police Department, there were zero citations or arrests, marijuana-related or otherwise, at the Mile High 420 Festival on Saturday, despite the majority of attendees publicly smoking and vaping cannabis. Fenced-off beer gardens, food trucks and pipe vendors were all part of the festival, too.

This is the third year in a row that police haven't cited or arrested anyone for cannabis consumption despite it being rampant on city property at the 420 Fest — the only event for which Denver relaxes enforcement of local laws banning public cannabis use. But that wasn't always the case at Civic Center.

An annual tradition in Denver since the 1990s, the 4/20 celebration at Civic Center has attracted tens of thousands of attendees since 2007, when the gathering began featuring a free concert. The event, now an all-day festival, has strong political roots.

Denver cannabis activist Ken Gorman began hosting monthly "smoke-in" protests at Civic Center Park in the ’90s before eventually starting an annual rally there on April 20. Gorman was murdered in a case that is still unsolved, but his friends took over the 4/20 event permit in 2007, which is when the Denver 420 Rally and the tradition of a free concert started.

The ratio of police citations to demonstrators was low even as attendance grew; still, public consumption citations at Civic Center usually ranged from several dozen to over 100 during those years. After a long and ugly battle with city officials and competing event organizers in 2017 and 2018, the Denver 420 Rally founders lost rights to the event permit at Civic Center to a dispensary chain. That chain, now called JARS Cannabis, removed the rally's political aspects and rebranded as the Mile High 420 Festival, but continued the tradition of a free concert and lax policy on cannabis use.

Citations dropped to as low as 33 in 2019, but the 420 Fest took a two-year hiatus during the pandemic. Since it returned in 2022, Denver police officers haven't issued a single cannabis consumption citation at the 420 Fest, according to the DPD. In 2023, the festival became open only to attendees who are 21 and older.