Everyone wants to know—’Where’s the best 420 events near me?’ April is already upon us, and with it the biggest day of the year for those of us who love weed. As you well know, 420 is history, culture, industry, lore, and always a whole lotta fun. To get you in the spirit, we have here a lineup of the best ways to celebrate stoner Christmas, from concerts with acclaimed artists to all-day fairs to drops with the biggest breeders around. Make this 420 yours, whichever way you want.

California

The Big Lebowski Screening: An Evening with The Dude

Firstly—The Dude is The Dude! Join the dude and the man himself, Jeff Bridges at San Francisco’s Masonic theater for a screening of the iconic Coen Brothers movie and a Q&A with Bridges.

The 420 Status Music Festival 

Secondly, try a little music, a lot of cannabis, and lanes of tricked out rides in Adelanto, CA. The 420 Status Music Festival showcases all the pillars of SoCal culture—cannabis, cars, and crooners. For adults 21 and up, there will be a separate vendor area to shop the wares, plus all-ages areas for the whole family to enjoy the day safely. 

Kushstock 

Thirdly, Kushstock returns to Los Angeles! The ninth year of the cannabis-music-culture festival will take place at The Bee Hive, a versatile events venue space with the means to host music performances, artist installations, vendors, food, and a whole lot of cannabis lovers. Evidently, general admission is FREE, with paid tickets for general admission-plus and VIP if you prefer mile-high treatment. 

Sesh Fest 2025 (April 19)

Fourthly, this multi-faceted cannabis festival blends all the different faces of Hollywood—a wellness zone with yoga and meditation, food vendors for all kinds of palates and dietary needs, a mix of live music and DJ sets, VIP lounges, and of course, lots of cannabis industry leaders and consumption areas. Sesh Fest goes from 10 am to 6 pm on April 19, so you can still go out at night. 

Sessions By The Bay Grand Opening

Up next, a new dispensary experience in San Diego opens on the dankest weekend of the year. Sessions By The Bay launches the city’s first consumption lounge with 16,000 square feet of possibilities. Undeniably, the dispensary comes with the works—top tier brands, nearly a dozen experiential art rooms like soundscapes and murals, a fine dining restaurant, a customizable canna-cocktail, and some of the best weed tech (Puffco, Volcano, etc) for rent. [link]

Hippie Hill 

Up next, San Francisco, the birthplace of medical cannabis, is also home to one of the oldest and most infamous 420 celebrations in the world—Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park. It’s grown a lot over the years from a smokey gathering to a full-fledged concert and marketplace. Most importantly, Hippie Hill has gone unofficial for the second year in a row this. Still, diehard seshers can still gather on any other hill in the park. See also: SF Space Walk parties all 4/20 week long.

Colorado

Wiz Khalifa at Red Rocks Amphitheater

The more things change in the cannabis industry, the more some things stay the same. Chiefly, the 420 concert bash at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado. This year, Wiz Khalifa’s April tour has him blowing smoke and beats across the amphitheater with supporting acts Larry June, Ab-Soul, and Chevy Woods. Certainly, if you want to relive the best 420 soundtrack anthems of the last decade, don’t hesitate—tickets are going fast. 

Sublime (April 18)

Before Wiz lights it up, join the original members of Sublime on Friday, April 18 at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado. Seriously, how many more chances will there be to witness legends at work? 

Mile High 420 Festival

Denver continues to do it in style with their annual Mile High 420 Festival. Gather at Civic Center Park for a day hosted by one of the best to ever chief it—Tommy Chong. Live tunes come courtesy of artists like Bone-Thug-N-Harmony, Cordae, and Kaliii, with plenty of food options and cannabis brand vendors onsite. Tickets start at $20 for general admission, with VIP options offering guests exclusive areas and swag.

Oregon

Homegrown Music Festival

Oregon has one of the most prodigious cannabis industries around, but they still love something a little homegrown too. As shown above, the third annual Homegrown Music Festival showcases the best of Bend, with bands that range from psychedelic, blues, Latin, and jazz. 

Washington

Phish in Seattle (April 18+19)

“Young poh-theeds,” as Phish addresses the crowd of Springfield in a classic episode of “The Simpsons,” gather around. Of course, this jam band needs no introduction nor justification to be at Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena for 420 weekend, with plenty of shop options nearby. 

Nevada

Dead & Company: Dead Forever 

For those of us who love The Dead, we go to see The Dead at their Vegas residency. Even though they won’t be jamming on 420 proper (who can blame them?), you can catch them on April 17, 18, 19, and 24, as well as plenty of shows in May. 

420 State Fair

Downtown Las Vegas will get a little greener this 420 with the 420 State Fair. Specifically, Nu Wu Cannabis Marketplace, home of Nevada’s first consumption lounge and one of the state’s biggest dispensaries, hosts a noon-to-midnight mix of classic stoner activities and carnival games. Particularly, attendees can patron the dab bar, rooftop deck, and concessions stands in between DJ sets, rides, art activities, and even a pie-eating contest. 

New York/ New Jersey

MARY Fest 2025 

The Big Apple means big cannabis business. Consequently, MARY Fest, the event arm of Mary Magazine, has fogged up New York City for years now, and a partnership with legacy dispensary operator Happy Munkey means 2025 will keep it blazing. Specifically, it’s part trade show, part festival, and all dank. MARY Fest will have food, vendors, activations, industry icons, and some foundational wisdom from the I Love Growing Marijuana (ILGM) team. Spending $50 at Happy Munkey gets you into MARY Fest free. ILGM has an infused dinner in the works,

Cypress Hill and guests at Hard Rock Live (April 19)

Luniz said it best—”light another blunt like Cypress Hill.” Thus, the spawners of some of the best 420 songs come to Atlantic City for an unforgettable concert experience with support from Atmosphere, Dilated Peoples, & The Pharcyde.

Weedtopia Festival 2025 “EL BLOQUE” (April 19)

Edison, New Jersey puts all the shades of cannabis culture and communities on the map with “El Bloque,” a throwback to the block parties of old set to a soundtrack of Latin beats. Purchase and consume local New Jersey cannabis, with food, option, art, raffles, and VIP experiences to spend your Saturday riding the best vibration. 

Ohio

420 Gala (April 19)

Another legalization state has come online. Ohio is now for cannabis lovers. The Midwest lights up with lots of events this year, and The Kee in Downtown Columbus is not to be ignored. Specifically, The Organic Light event organization puts on its 420 Gala with a little bit of everything—celebrity appearances, munchies, product samplings, games, a fashion show, and even an Easter egg hunt to coincide with the holiday. 

Georgia

Sweetwater 420 Fest

Obviously, the people of Georgia love 420 and all things cannabis culture, even if their state laws haven’t caught up with the people. Hence, the annual Sweetwater 420 Festival at Pullman Yards offers a wide-ranging musical lineup all weekend, from Cypress Hill to Marcus King to Greensky Bluegrass.

Tennessee

Nashville Cannafestival (April 18-20)

Yeehaw! Nashville brings cannabis culture and community down south with the three-day Cannafestival. One of the biggest music cities in the world also wants you to know that they love cannabis, hemp, and CBD. Particularly, this weekend offers attendees workshops, food, artist installations, music (duh), vendors, and panels to help keep Tennessee’s cannabis laws pushing in the right direction. 

Texas

Willie Nelson at the Whitewater Amphitheater (April 18+19)

Lastly, Willie Nelson is, indeed, on the road again. He stops by New Braunfels, Texas, during 420 weekend for two nights of music with supporting act with Robert Earl Keen.

Related

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Arizona

Cannaland

Mesa, Arizona’s Golfland Sunplash becomes CannaLand—with a mix of mini-golf, laser tag, bumper cars and boats, live DJs, arcade games, and more April 13 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. for $70. It’s Arizona’s best festival.

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So the next time you wonder, ‘What’s the best 420 events near me?’ Now you know! Have fun out there and drink water!

New York marijuana regulators are reportedly investigating six companies that may have taken part in illegal shipments of cannabis across state lines in violation of both federal and state law, according to The New York Times.

The targets of the investigation, according to unnamed sources, include California-based Stiiizy and Turn, Oregon-based Gron, Washington-based Mfused, and New York companies Waahoo and To the Moon, The Times reported.

The companies all came up in conjunction with an inspection Monday at two licensed cannabis processing facilities on Long Island owned by Omnium Canna, where New York Office of Cannabis Management agents were seen. The investigation has been ongoing since February, The Times reported, and Omnium works with all six of the targeted companies.

Omnium produced 1.2 million cannabis products for the six businesses, with a value of $47 million, just since October, The Times reported.

Spokespeople for Stiiizy, Gron and Omnium denied any wrongdoing and said their dealings have all been by the book. They characterized the inspections at Omnium as a routine audit. A spokesperson for Mfused also told MJBizDaily that it is “not under investigation.”

“At no point have we sourced cannabis from out of state or engaged in practices that violate New York’s cannabis regulations,” Stiiizy CEO James Kim told The Times.

Drew Tybus, a spokesman for Gron, added, “We are not under investigation in any state in which we operate or where our products are manufactured and sold, and refute any claims or references to the contrary.”

The OCM didn’t respond to requests for comment by The Times, but a former state Cannabis Control Board member said the practice of shipping marijuana illegally across state lines is essentially an open secret in the cannabis trade.

“Everybody knows it’s going on, but nobody’s being held accountable for it,” agricultural scientist Jennifer Gilbert Jenkins told The Times. “If the (OCM) wants there to be confidence in the state market, then they need to come out and show that they’re on top of it. And that’s not the case.”

The Times also obtained a whistleblower report that was more than 2,000 pages long, which claimed there’s a major disconnect between lab testing results of cannabis goods that look for contaminants and the product safety labels on many products being sold at licensed dispensaries. The true testing results, according to the whistleblower, could result in products being recalled or quarantined, The Times reported.

Part of the problem is that New York has been slow to roll out a track-and-trace system for cannabis companies, similar to what’s required in most other state marijuana markets. These software programs are designed to track inventory and prevent illegal diversion. During testimony before a joint budget hearing in February, Felicia Reid, acting executive director of the Office of Cannabis Management, said the agency was in the process of standing up BioTracl as the state’s track-and-trace system.

Felicia Reid took over as interim executive director of the New York Office of Cannabis Management during a tumultuous period. The state Office of General Services had just released a scathing audit and Gov. Kathy Hochul lambasted the state’s recreational marijuana market as a “disaster.”

Now,  a year later and just past the fourth anniversary of the 2021 state law which legalized adult-use cannabis, Reid believes things in the New York cannabis market have turned a corner for the better.

In an interview this week with Green Market Report, Reid shared an optimistic view of how the market continues to evolve combined with real-world clarity on the dangers posed by the still-thriving illicit marijuana trade.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You came on during a tumultuous time. How do you feel like the industry is doing currently almost a year later?

Reid: It has been a amazing whirlwind of almost a year. I really can’t believe all that’s happened, especially in the environment that I came in. There was criticisms of the agency’s practice and its process. There was the Office of General Services look into the agency’s operations.

I needed to engage very particularly with not just the folks in the OCM, but really with our stakeholders. I’m really conscious that this plant is so personal to so many people. I hear it all the time. It’s even personal in my own life.

I’m not somebody who’s here to say I have a title and then not do the work that comes along with it. For me, it was really showing both internally and externally that I wanted to show up to support that work. I wanted to make the connections that were necessary for this agency to survive, because it was going in a path where things were very much all over the place.

Several hundred CAURD licensees have had serious trouble getting open. One of the most common that I’ve heard is a lack of access to capital, and the CAURD permits are set to start expiring in June. What are your thoughts? 

Reid: You’re a 100% right. The issue there is – and in this business writ large – is access to capital. There are a lot of folks who see dollar signs galore in this industry and want a piece of that, particularly because they have been specifically harmed by the way the state addressed cannabis. Folks have business acumen, but the structures around financing just aren’t there to support them.

One of the things that I’m really excited about with our CAURD program is we just opened up our CAURD grant, which allows for any CAURD licensee to apply for up to $30,000 in grant funding to be able to pay for any operating expense. Send us your receipts, send us your business expenses. If we can do something to help support that, then you’re eligible for these grant monies.

That’s a starting point.

I wish federal views on cannabis would change. But I think we’re not going to get help from the federal level. We as a state have to be very intentional around creating resources programming, and we have done some of that with our Cannabis Hub Incubator Program Academy that works to support our licensees in navigating some of the red tape and the bureaucracy.

We as an agency have to create some of those resources and support structures and some of those financial navigation abilities, but it’s really everyone working toward the same end, which is the survival of New York cannabis. We have as an agency have a lot of work to do to address the stigma, which is also where some of our licensees are getting hung up.

Are you going to support another extension for the CAURDs?

Reid: We just did a first extension of the licensees (in November), and I think we’ll have to see what’s happening on the ground relative to a question around a second. I don’t want to commit to anything, because I am very much an evidence-based person. And I always want to see where things are at as we’re contemplating a policy change or extending or granting an ability for our licensees.

One of the other big policy moving targets has been the number of business licenses that are going to be issued by the state. Has the OCM gotten any closer to figuring out where the cutoff might be?

Reid: That direction has to come from the Cannabis Control Board. At a board meeting last year, they did a resolution around licensing targets and coming to some conclusion around that – and the best that we can do as an agency is to provide the board with as much information about what the market looks like and what we’re seeing.

The OCM did make a recommendation to the board in December around licensing in terms of what we were seeing. A lot of our cultivators, a lot of our processor distributors, all of them got licensed last year, which means that they haven’t totally operationalized until this year. So we’re not going to know until October this year what the impact of that is.

But one of the things that we’re also very mindful of is we don’t want to oversaturate and we don’t want to devalue having a license, which is what we’ve seen in other jurisdictions on the supply side. The best that we can do is pay attention to what we’re seeing on the ground, but also what’s happened in other jurisdictions.

As to the retail side, we made a recommendation to get upwards of between 1,600 and 2,000 on the retail side, and we’re only at 335 open for business right now. So we have a lot of growth left on the retail side of things. But again, we’re waiting and relying on the board to make something conclusive and concrete for the industry about what it can expect based on OCM’s recommendations.

Do you have any guess as to what the outcome is going to be for the thousands of license applicants from the December queue that are still waiting and holding on to hope that they may be eventually going to get a permit?

Reid: There are a lot of people with hopes in this industry, and at a certain point, hopes meet the cold reality of both market forces but also other prerogatives. The thing I always say to businesses is, don’t plan for the industry that exists now. Pay attention to what’s happening in other jurisdictions. Pay attention to what may be the long-term outcome of a policy or a practice, because that’s the future that your business is going to have to orient toward.

When it comes to some of the most successful folks in this industry, (they’re) folks who are constantly doing their homework around what will work and what will not.

We’ve started to walk into the December queue on the retail side specifically, because if we’re not done  with the November queue, we’re about to be done.

What are you hearing and seeing as far as the unlicensed market, not just in New York City, but across the state? Is that still a serious problem?

Reid: It is a problem. I’m not going to sugarcoat that. That requires us as an agency to be just as dogged and to get ahead of the ways in which we see things moving. And I will say on the unlicensed side, we’ve seen all sorts of machinations. It’s not just the brick and mortar; it’s folks taking advantage of the mail.

I’m also glad that we created our Trade Practice Unit to be able to go after folks who are licensees who are doing these types of machinations. That work has not stopped. Over the last couple of weeks, our OCM investigations team has been out training other jurisdictions on their enforcement practices.

If we were a small state, having our arms around this issue would a lot easier. But we’re a large state with many different regional attitudes and environments. And so with that, we also want to make sure that law enforcement partners at the local level are also standing up their own enforcement actions.

One CAURD licensee I spoke to recently told me he’s homeless because he’s put literally everything he’s had into trying to open a dispensary in the Hamptons, but can’t get it done. What would you want to say to that demographic of cannabis license applicant?

Reid: The industry that I came into in June last year is not the industry in March of 2025. Things have changed so much, and I certainly understand from an applicant’s perspective, feeling like it is starting to get away.

There is this sort of time pressure to be able to participate in this industry, and participating in the industry, of course, isn’t a guarantee of success. I’m trying to ensure that we as an agency aren’t creating policy missteps or mistakes or overpromising and underdelivering, because I think that elevates hopes and expectations in a way that’s unreasonable. I always want to make sure that the agency is communicating where it’s at, what it’s doing, what it’s looking at.

The best I can do is put that information out there.