Marijuana smoke fills the air at 4:20 p.m. during last year s 4/20 pot celebration in Denver s Civic Center. (Joe Amon, Denver Post file)

Editorial: City of Denver was right to hold the line on length of 4/20 Rally

Denver did the right thing when it denied a request to allow the annual 4/20 marijuana fest in Civic Center to stretch from Saturday and Sunday into the following Monday.

Pot enthusiasts still will get the weekend of April 18-19 in the park.

But the city recently established a moratorium on new events in the city’s biggest parks that also bars recurring events from expanding their footprints or adding days.

It would have been unfair to allow the 4/20 event an extra day under this provision, and the event organizers didn’t want to move the two-day festival to Sunday and Monday.

Certainly, revelers are likely to converge on Civic Center anyway on April 20, which has become marijuana’s unofficial holiday. They have for years.

But extending the permitted festival from the weekend to April 20 would be a challenge any year the date doesn’t fall on a weekend. Next year, for example, April 20 is a Wednesday.

The city long has wrestled with the annual event during which people publicly smoke pot. It appears as if it is here to stay, but just for the weekend.


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This story was first published on DenverPost.com