Brandon Johnson
Audio By Carbonatix
“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.
This year, make your gift count –
Invest in local news that matters.
Our work is funded by readers like you who make voluntary gifts because they value our work and want to see it continue. Make a contribution today to help us reach our $50,000 goal!
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.
