Thursday's Mile High 420 Festival will not allow people under the age of 21 to attend. The festival, which features live music, experiential activations, vendors, food trucks -- and lots of weed- has historically been a free, public celebration of cannabis culture held at Civic Center Park (101 14th Ave).
One Chance to Grow Up, a locally based nonprofit that focuses on protecting youth from marijuana commercialization, brought up concerns about the festival's access to minors before last year's festival.
"We expressed our concerns to the organizers two days before the 2022 event when we discovered that their system of registering for a ticket to the event didn't have a mechanism for age verification," said Alton Dillard, spokesperson for One Chance to Grow Up. "It was too late to have an effect on the 2022 event, but the organizers were amenable to finding a solution to restrict attendance to those 21 and up for the 2023 festival."
This is the second year that JARS Cannabis has hosted the festival in Denver. It has changed its policies for 2023. Adam Schmidt, co-owner of Headline, the event production company putting together the Mile High 420 Festival, spoke about the policy change to not allow entry to anyone under the age of 21.
"The perimeter of the park is always secured. We always do metal detection at all the gates so that is where we are going to be implementing ID checks as well this year," Schmidt said.
Last year was Headline's first year organizing the festival.
"We had less than 3 months to do the entire event," Schmidt said. "We just didn't have a whole lot of time to plan it. This year, we got a whole lot more time to plan and that's where we stepped back and looked at why we have young kids coming to this event."
Dillard said One Chance to Grow Up is neutral on adult legalization but is rather concerned the negative effects of marijuana on the still-developing brain.
"We are glad that the event organizers and the city agree that attendance should include only those who can legally consume recreational marijuana," Dillard said. "We hope and expect that the age minimum will be strictly enforced."
The nonprofit sent out a petition last year that garnered nearly 500 signatures in support of the 21+ age restriction. It also held a press conference, hosted by Denver's charter school 5280 High School, which serves students in recovery from substance use, to bring attention to the problem of underage attendance at the 420 festival.
"Our mission is solely focused on protecting kids from marijuana. This policy reinforces both the law and a growing body of public health research: Marijuana use is harmful to young people, whose brains are still growing," Dillard said.
Since Civic Center Park is a public park, concerns about students skipping school to attend has also been brought up by the nonprofit.
"You would see a lot of young people at prior festivals. Since they are not allowed to consume, you would see dips in [school] attendance on that day," Dillard said.
One Chance to Grow Up says data it got from Denver Public Schools show that school attendance on 4/20 drops to well below the average attendance rate on weekdays.
"It's the responsible thing to do," Schmidt said. "To make it a 21+ event."
