Will a Lawsuit Revive Humboldt County's Legendary 420 Bash?

The Arcata 420 bash was still raging in 2008. Photos via Flickr user Bob Doran

For about a decade, thousands of people swarmed the tiny town of Arcata in Humboldt County, California, to celebrate 420. Arcata, which is about five hours north of San Francisco, is home to about 15,700 people, meaning that the pothead fest represented a huge surge in population.

But after an A&E documentary called Pot City, USA portrayed Arcata as a Norman Rockwell painting invaded by a weed cartel, mysterious events befell the park that hosted the bash. In 2010, paths leading to its entrance were blocked off. One year, the grassy area where stoners would gather to celebrate cannabis culture had conveniently been covered in fish emulsion. By this past April, no one was showing up anymore.

According to a lawsuit filed Thursday, that's exactly what the police chief and city manager wanted to achieve.

Plaintiff Gregory P. Allen, head of the the ACLU's Redwood Chapter, says that public records requests revealed a long-standing plan to shut the event down within five years. And just because it's worked for now doesn't mean the medical marijuana activist will let the bureaucrats win in the long run. He says the right to assemble and celebrate weed is protected by the First Amendment.

“The city didn't like the documentary, so they started trying to interfere with these gatherings,” he told me. “And they kept kinda ramping it up every year. I'm an eyewitness.”

Kevin Hoover, who ran a weekly paper called the Arcata Eye from 1996 to 2013, contends that the event posed legitimate problems, however. “It was a tradition that got out of hand,” he says. “Nobody applied for permits. There was no sanitation and no security. There were lots of petty crimes like shoplifting, and neighbors would find poop in their yards and runaways in the woods.”

Much of the documentary, which was hosted by Meredith Vieira, focused on the city's grow house epidemic. Although California passed the Compassionate Use Act in 1996, allowing residents to grow weed for personal use, one out of seven homes were being used just to grow the plant, according to the documentary. Arcata is the sort of quaint Northern California town where day-to-day life can be almost painfully quirky; Hoover used to write the news roundup as a poem. But soon after industrial marijuana came to town, he was reporting on gun-toting grow house operators.

Though it makes perfect sense that the city would want to attack marijuana-related crime by cracking down on Arcata's 420-friendly image, the strategy used was undoubtedly flawed.

Allen, the ACLU official, says that one method the city used theoretically caused many transient pot-lovers to face felony charges down the line. The police would liberally use tickets for smoking cigarettes, which is illegal in much of the town, including the park.

“When you're dealing with transients, they don't really believe in paper, and they're not the most responsible people,” he explains. “So they would get an infraction, not show up to court, and force the judge to issue a warrant.” As a result, Allen told me, a hippie could get pulled over in another state, booked for the outstanding warrant, and charged with a felony if he were carrying drugs.

Hoover says that grow houses aren't much of a problem in Arcata anymore. That's because last year the city enacted a 40 percent surcharge on any residence who was consuming three times as much energy as a normal Arcatan. Still, between getting rid of the festival and passing the act, weed permeates this rural area of Humboldt County. On October 14, police pulled over a U-Haul containing 200 pounds of harvested marijuana—hardly an amount for “personal use.”

Regardless of whether or not grow houses still plague the city, Allen from the ACLU says his case is a slam dunk. “This event was a celebration of medical cannabis,” he tells me. “And the city just made it impossible to attend.”

Police Chief Thomas F. Chapman says he can't comment on the litigation, although he did say, “There's so much more to this.” Former City Manager Randal J. Mendosa didn't respond to messages left at his home.

"This event's about free speech," Allen says, "and it's always been about free speech.”

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