{"id":41784,"date":"2020-03-19T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2020\/03\/19\/coronavirus-cancels-420\/"},"modified":"2020-03-24T12:35:45","modified_gmt":"2020-03-24T20:35:45","slug":"coronavirus-cancels-420","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2020\/03\/19\/coronavirus-cancels-420\/","title":{"rendered":"Coronavirus Cancels 420"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Authorities in San Francisco, home to one of the largest and longest-running 420 celebrations in the country, have joined Denver in canceling<\/a>\u00a0the annual cannabis fete amid concerns over the widening novel coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n

Long a \u201crenegade\u201d underground event with no sponsor or permitting, the yearly gathering on Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park near the city\u2019s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood has become somewhat tamed in the legalization era. Since 2017,\u00a0420<\/a>\u00a0has been a city-sanctioned event, with a permit, a sponsor, fencing and other trappings of legitimacy.<\/p>\n

The coronavirus has changed all that. San Francisco has been under a shelter-in-place order since Monday. While cannabis dispensaries have been declared \u201cessential businesses\u201d and will remain open \u2014 following a brief period of closure on Tuesday \u2014 public gatherings of more than 10 people are forbidden and all citizens are advised to practice social distancing.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, the city\u2019s Recreation and Park Department will not issue 420 an event permit, agency spokeswoman Tamara Barak Aparton told Cannabis Now on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re under the shelter-in-place order, with no gatherings until at least April 7,\u201d she said. \u201cWith that in mind, obviously we had to cancel it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex Aquino, a Haight-Ashbury merchant who has secured the\u00a0420 event<\/a>\u00a0permit for the last few years, told Cannabis Now that the decision was expected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s bigger stuff than 420 going on right now,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cit\u2019s too soon to say\u201d if a replacement event, a sort of \u201c420 observed,\u201d might happen later in the spring or in the summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have some plans to do a couple of things, but we\u2019re still working on the details,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s event was to have been sponsored by Weedmaps and featured musical acts.<\/p>\n

As for what might happen if crowds still gather at the hill on April 20 \u2014 a Monday this year \u2014 nobody could quite say what might happen with such a fluid situation that changes multiple times per day. Park rangers could theoretically block access to the park, but that might be an operation for which resources simply cannot be allocated.<\/p>\n

In years past, Arquino has sponsored a \u201cclean-up crew\u201d to police trash and other refuse that\u2019s often accompanied crowds. Whether that will happen this year also depends on what happens over the next month, he said.<\/p>\n

The move follows the cancellation of the Mile High 420 Festival in Denver, which bills itself as the world\u2019s largest.<\/p>\n

Other 420 rituals observed around the world are not permitted affairs. These\u00a0include<\/a>\u00a0the gathering at Porter Meadow at UC Santa Cruz, though crowds had been thinning in recent years due to increased campus police enforcement, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported last year.<\/p>\n

420 joins the ranks of numerous other concerts and cultural events upended, postponed, or canceled to slow the spread of the coronavirus, which as of Wednesday had sickened 10,442 Americans and killed 150,\u00a0according to the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>. The hardest-hit states so far are Washington, New York and California.<\/p>\n

And new data from federal health authorities suggests that contrary to earlier information, young people \u2014 the kind who might be drawn out to 420 \u2014 are susceptible to serious health complications if they contract the disease. According to figures released Wednesday, 38% of coronavirus patients sick enough to require hospitalization were under 55,\u00a0as the Washington Post reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

TELL US, what\u2019s the best 420 you\u2019ve ever had?<\/p>\n

The post Coronavirus Cancels 420<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n


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\nRead More: Coronavirus Cancels 420<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Authorities in San Francisco, home to one of the largest and longest-running 420 celebrations in the country, have joined Denver in canceling\u00a0the annual cannabis fete amid concerns over the widening novel coronavirus pandemic. Long a \u201crenegade\u201d underground event with no sponsor or permitting, the yearly gathering on Hippie Hill inContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[480,3867,50,13218,13342,69],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41784"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41785,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41784\/revisions\/41785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}