Millions of students throughout the nation will spend April 20 in a voluntary coma.

That’s right: It’s almost 4/20.

Dating back to 1971, 4/20 was the ultra-underground, top secret and totally undecipherable code that pot-smoking, herb-inhaling snuffers used to ensure their illicit daily recreational activities slipped quietly through the system.

But today, we value subtlety just about as much as we value the law. So 4/20 has become our annual hiatus from reality – an excuse to intently stare at moving objects and/or eat our body’s weight in chicken wings and Cheetos.

But the University of Colorado-Boulder likes to call it a ‘Smoke-Out,’ ‘Smoke-A-Thon’ or ‘Smoke-a-rama,’ where students spend 24 hours on their Quad in mind-numbing equilibrium with the world around them.

The ‘one day’ where people sit still and eat. Only in America, people.

You see, the once avant-garde and clever ‘cannabis culture’ has transformed into a group of kids that will go to lame and obvious extremes to ensure 4/20 isn’t contaminated by the conservative or the Department of Public Safety.

But I don’t get it. What’s the point in devoting an entire day to ‘celebrating’ something you already do most mornings over waffles and Ernie Davis Dining Center omelets? Are you going to host a backyard ‘smoke-out’ every Wednesday afternoon before your 3 o’clock recitation, or every Sunday night before you sit down to watch ‘Celebrity Apprentice’?

I didn’t think so.

Sure, drinkers have St. Patty’s Day, but isn’t part of the low-key stoner culture staying low-key?

Last time I checked, wearing a graphic T-shirt with a pun that says ‘Highagain’ instead of ‘Heineken’ or ‘Don’t Fear the Green Reefer’ rather than ‘Grim Reaper’ is the opposite of low-key.

If you think preordering 29 egg rolls, four Insomnia Cookie boxes (that’s 48 f***ing cookies), two Vitos from Jimmy John’s and a cup of Roly Poly Roly Yo with granola and strawberries is playing it cool, you must already be snuffed out.

I mean, seriously. Who spends an entire day skipping class to engineer a window filter that also complements his or her teal and cardinal red color scheme?

Who in their right mind sprints to the front of the Kimmel Food Court Taco Bell line during the commercial break of an ‘American Dad’ marathon just to let a slimy-handed woman in a hair net pony up six Crunchwrap Supremes and a Doritos Locos Taco?

And what kind of moronic kid spends hours sitting in his running car, following the pipeline screensaver on his or her iPhone, nodding his or her head in a ‘side, side, up, down’ motion to a dubstep remix of ambient forest tones and trickling dew drops?

I’ll tell you who: stoners – State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry Plant Pathologists because they’re people, too, and adult men who have a** prints molded to their couches from too many hours of watching ‘Cheaters’ and late-night HBO.

Oh, and one more group: us.

Ad Council can make an anti-drug public service announcement with a Morgan Freeman voiceover, but we will still sit paralyzed in our cars staring at dashboard lights, letting 7-Eleven taquitos, Slurpees and powdered doughnuts infiltrate our bodies on the daily.

Syracuse, 4/20 is our way of life. In a way, we’ve made every single day a holiday, and April 20 is the day we get to fully embrace our habits.

So, in honor of the holiday that further perpetuates our already disgusting and illegal habits, I hope you sincerely enjoy 4/20.

Don’t fear the green reefer.

Kara McFarlane is a sophomore television, radio and film major – assuming radio is even a thing anymore – and her column appears every other Thursday. She can be reached at cnmcfarl@syr.edu. Follow her on Twitter at @karanicolemcf.

Published on April 18, 2012 at 12:00 pm