The best tech products and weed accessories to celebrate 420 – Screen Shot
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The best tech products and weed accessories to celebrate 420

Today is 420, the first and hopefully the last one we will celebrate while in quarantine. If you’re a weed enthusiast, you most likely spend any extra time you can get on finding out how to level up your smoking (or vaporizing) game.

For this 420, whether you’re planning on smoking twice as much as you would usually do or you’ve smoked up your stash weeks ago and are about to ride the cooking craze wave and bake space cakes to properly celebrate 420, we selected the weed gadgets and tech products just for you in order to enhance your smoking experience and make this 420 extra special. Here are the best tech products for stoners.

Strain Genie

Strain Genie is a platform that matches your DNA with the weed strain that, according to their research, is the best fit for you depending on your health. By partnering with home-testing companies such as 23AndMe, MyHeritage, Ancestry and FamilyTreeDNA, Strain Genie provides users with a test kit that will later on be processed to generate a personalised 19-page cannabis report. “Know which dosages and ratios of cannabinoids and terpenes you should prioritize on your informed cannabis journey,” reads Strain Genie’s website.

Some of you might be wary of what a DNA testing kit may represent, but once you manage to overlook this aspect, you might discover some important facts about your cannabis consumption and discover different strains of it. We knew 2019 was the year of DNA home-testing kits, but you might want to give it another go in 2020, if only for a better high.

Weed apps

Tech is constantly innovating, even in the weed industry with the help of cannabis tech apps. While most of them only work in specific locations—as they exist in accordance to whether smoking and buying weed is legal or not—they are still worth mentioning to get a sense of what the future of legalisation looks like.

Leafly, for instance, is an app that contains a detailed database of cannabis strains, cannabis-related latest news, and which gives users the possibility to choose a weed strain according to the different symptoms they want to cure.

EazeMD was an app that was only available in California that enabled face-to-face virtual consultations with doctors who could eventually send patients recommendations. As a medical marijuana recommendation is no longer required for most areas in California, the app shifted into Eaze, a delivery service for cannabis products. While ordering weed legally on an app sounds like a far away dream for non California residents, Eaze showcases a near future where medical marijuana is not only legalised, but easily accessible through digital technology.

Smart weed vaporizers

For all the tech and weed enthusiasts out there who intend to level up the way in which they consume cannabis this 420, hi-tech vaporizers are the way forward. Characterised by cutting edge designs, these vaporizers are set to enhance your weed experience. In other words, you’re about to get high on another level.

Best tech products and weed accessories to celebrate 420

Among them is the PAX 3, a portable vape that works with both flowers and concentrates. Its accompanying app also provides temperature control and management of vapour and flavour output to make sure users can balance it out according to their preferences.

If PAX 3 is a decent upgrade, Puffco Peak is the ultimate luxury vaporizer. For $379,99, this portable see-through electronic vaporizer eliminates the manual parts of the dabbing process, making it all smooth and clean.

Happy 420

I see you ordering your new vaporizer with next day delivery. Enjoy as responsibly as you can, and happy 420!

Why is 420 weed day?

Why is 420 known as weed day?

Tomorrow is not just any other Monday, it’s Monday 20 April. Whether you are a marijuana user or not, there are strong chances that you know what 4/20, also spelled 420 or 4 20, means: it’s the unofficial holiday celebrated by potheads who come together to, well, smoke pot. But even weed enthusiasts out there are not all aware of why they wait for 4:20 to light a blunt in the afternoon (or in the morning, I’m not judging). Why was this particular number chosen? Where did 420 come from and what does it stand for?

Police code

There are different theories about the origin of 420 but no one seems to be entirely sure of which one is true. Ever heard that 420 is police code for possession? Or maybe that it is the penal code for marijuana use? Well, both of these are false. The California Senate Bill 420 that refers to the use of medical marijuana was actually named specifically for the code, not the other way around, which means that even our governments are linking the number 420 to marijuana use.

Chemicals in marijuana

Another theory states that there are 420 active chemicals in marijuana, hence the connection between the drug and the number. But according to the Dutch Association for Legal Cannabis and Its Constituents as Medicine (NCSM), there are more than 500 active ingredients in marijuana, and only about 70 or so are cannabinoids unique to the plant. This rules this one out as well.

Earliest written link

A subreddit on ‘trees’ speculates that the earliest written link between marijuana and 420 comes from H.P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling’s short story In the Walls of Eryx published in 1939: “Although everything was spinning perilously, I tried to start in the right direction and hack my way ahead. My route must have been far from straight, for it seemed hours before I was free of the mirage-plant’s pervasive influence. Gradually the dancing lights began to disappear, and the shimmering spectral scenery began to assume the aspect of solidity. When I did get wholly clear I looked at my watch and was astonished to find the time was only 4:20. Though eternities had seemed to pass, the whole experience could have consumed little more than a half-hour.”

San Rafael High School students

Many believe that the holiday came out of a ritual started by a group of high school students in California during the 1970s. According to Steven Hager, a former editor of the marijuana-focused news outlet High Times, a group of kids at San Rafael High School in San Rafael used to meet daily at 4:20 to smoke weed after school. When they’d see each other in the hallways during the day, they used to tell each other ‘420 Louie’, meaning, ‘Let’s meet at the Louis Pasteur statue at 4:20 to smoke’.

As many still stipulated on whether this story was true or not, the group of Californians mentioned before who call themselves the Waldos published documents in order to give this theory some legitimacy. Screen Shot spoke to one of the Waldos, Steve Capper, about why people seem to still doubt the origin of the term: “Many people have their own ideas and fantasies about friends and relatives who supposedly started ‘420’. The Waldos have created a whole culture of fake 420 claimers. The one thing that all these doubters have in common is not one shred of proof to their claims which might create doubt on their side.”

Capper certified that the Waldos are the only group of people with documented proof of their claims, which has been looked at by experts and international media and kept “in a vault in San Francisco at 420 Montgomery Street.”

Whatever its origins, 4/20 has become a very important holiday for weed smokers. As soon as the saying caught on and the Grateful Dead eventually picked it up, what was a simple code shared between a few stoners became the worldwide event for smokers that it is today. Originally a counterculture holiday to protest the social and legal stigmas against marijuana, 420 has also become the perfect opportunity for businesses and corporations to cash in on marijuana culture.

Solo sesh for this 420

This year, those of you who looked forward to celebrating 420 with other marijuana enthusiasts will have to settle for a solo sesh at home. So get your laptop out, log in on your Zoom account, close your door and get ready to smoke it up, self-isolation style.