High on 420

Dion Nash was not the man for too much water in his playing days. But he sells it all right. And he calls it 420. He puts a bottle on the table in the suave conference room of his office, and calls it “his baby”. There are many reasons for that name.

First, the water is packaged by 42Below, a major vodka manufacturer. So you just add a “0”, and get the name. They use the same 420 water in their vodka.

The second is a pretty cool reason. What’s the chemical formula for water? H-2-O. Hence 4-2-0.

Okay, so the water is a hit. They pour 420ml into bottles and it sells in "UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, America, Asia".

“It is actually funny there are two other products in the market that are 420ml,” Dion says. And then he drops the line that you are after: “It’s called four-twenty, which means different things around the world.”

Four-twenty also refers to consuming cannabis and identifying with the culture. So the story goes: a group of teenagers in San Rafael, California, presumably students, used to meet after school, at 4.20pm, to smoke marijuana at the Louis Pasteur Statue. There was nothing particular about the time, it was just after the school ended. The term became part of their group's salute, "four-twenty Louis", and the fans of the band Grateful Dead popularised it. It became so popular that four-twenty celebrations would happen on April 20 (4/20, see).

Anyway, not digressing from the topic, you tell Dion what 420 means in India. Under the Indian Penal Code, the article 420 looks into matters of frauds, forgeries, con jobs, and such like. So a fraudulent, dishonest person, a con man, is affectionately called "420".

“We are bottling water and selling, so the name is appropriate. You can always get it from the tap,” he says. What a bloody marketing genius.