Each year, the relevant dialogue about marijuana legalization moves even further as a serious dialogue rather than anything susceptible to being portrayed as stoners‘ folly.

Worldwide each year, marijuana becomes more accepted for medicinal purposes and more widely legalized and decriminalized for recreational purposes.

April 20 is not only relevant to me for the civil liberties benefits of legalizing marijuana, but also because it is the anniversary of this Underdog Blog launched in 2006, and because it is the birthday of retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who repeatedly was one of the steadier voices of reason on the Court.

420 refers both to a popular time of the afternoon for lighting up marijuana, and also has become a name for marijuana. April 20-4/20 each year is an opportunity to measure how far we have or have not come since the previous year for legalizing and decriminalizing marijuana.

The hard and relentless decades-long work of marijuana activists has paid off hugely by now, even though much more ground needs to be covered to get marijuana legalized nationwide and worldwide. Thanks all the tireless marijuana activists and courageous politicians who have been so instrumental at bringing us to this point of legalization of medical marijuana, and legalization and decriminalization of marijuana used for recreation.