How UC Santa Cruz lost its crown as the ‘most stoned campus on earth’

In April 2004, Rolling Stone magazine sent freelance reporter Vanessa Grigoriadis to Santa Cruz to cover 4/20 — specifically, the legendary, impromptu pot-smoking gathering at UC Santa Cruz’s Porter Meadow, which materializes annually on the stoner holiday April 20. 

The story she produced, a feature that ran in the Sept. 16, 2004, issue, profiled a pseudonymic “silly superstoned senior couple” at UC Santa Cruz and their weed-tinged misadventures. In the span of the week that Grigoriadis followed them, the pair consumed prodigious amounts of cannabis — smoking joints and pipes, using a magnifying glass and sunlight to light their bong and baking pot cupcakes in anticipation of the big day. 

That an informal gathering of UCSC pot smokers would be worthy of feature reporting in a national magazine might seem surprising in 2025, when college student cannabis consumption is typically not newsworthy. But back in 2004, the reputation of UCSC as a stoner school was, evidently, a subject of national concern. 

“I was told by my editor to go cover 4/20 at Santa Cruz,” Grigoriadis told Lookout in a phone interview. “That was my assignment, ‘find some people and cover marijuana culture.’” 

Grigoriadis, who was 29 and living in Los Angeles at the time, was “known as the young ‘stunt journalism’ person,” she said. “You know, if you want to cover groupies or something, call Vanessa and she’ll go to the place and create an interesting story.” 

Yet 21 years since this famous — or, to UCSC administrators, infamous — profile of campus stoners was published, the school’s reputation for cultivating weed culture is far less pronounced. In particular, the caricatured stoner protagonists of the Rolling Stone story, ripped straight from central casting, no longer exist in the same way, students and alumni say. 

There doesn’t seem to be one singular reason for this change, but myriad. For one, marijuana’s commercial availability has dulled the need for a furtive, aesthetic culture — think cannabis leaf T-shirts and fabric patterns, which are no longer a common sight on campus. Zoomers, a notoriously socially anxious generation, understandably seem to prefer drugs and activities that promote socializing. And UC Santa Cruz’s growing investment in STEM has led many to associate the school with research, not stoner culture.

Polling attests to UCSC no longer being the “most stoned” campus. Princeton Review surveys college students across the country annually, including running polls on the popularity of cannabis consumption. This past year, UC Santa Cruz weighed in with a lowly No. 22 ranking on Princeton Review’s “Reefer Madness” list — beaten by many colleges that don’t have a reputation for cannabis culture, including Ohio University in Athens (No. 19), Pitzer College in Southern California (No. 5), and Skidmore College in New York (No. 1). 

Alumni who went to UC Santa Cruz back in the ‘aughts, when Grigoriadis’ story was published, say the school’s reputation has changed since then. Meghan Herning, an attorney who lives in Oakland and who graduated from UCSC in 2008, says the school was “definitely known” for its stoner reputation when she attended. 

“I think we had a sense that was part of the culture then,” Herning said of student cannabis consumption. Nowadays, she says she and her professional colleagues see UCSC primarily as a science and research powerhouse, and don’t usually connect it to cannabis culture. “I don’t think that’s really what the school’s known for now,” Herning added. “It’s changed a lot.” Indeed, the university likes to tout how highly it ranks among research universities; in 2019, UCSC was ranked No. 37 for “research influence” among all universities globally. 

Some of that might have to do with history. In the 1970s, Santa Cruz County was a hub for cannabis distribution and smuggling. Chris Carr, an erstwhile smuggler turned chronicler of Central Coast cannabis history, writes that fishermen back then would unload “thousands of pounds of imported cannabis” from international barges idling in Monterey Bay. The trafficking of cannabis through the Monterey Bay area meant that some of the seeds from abroad ended up in the hands of local growers, who bred renowned strains that this region became known for. In a sense, UCSC’s reputation for fostering cannabis culture was a reflection of regional trends in cultivation and smuggling at the time.

Nowadays, the legal cannabis industry in Santa Cruz county is in a downturn. As Lookout reported last year, local municipalities are desperately rejiggering regulations in an attempt to shore up a dying industry. Last month, the county board of supervisors approved plans to allow local pot dispensaries to open smoking and consumption lounges in hopes of giving the industry an economic boost.

UCSC students say that while cannabis is still common on campus these days, there isn’t an attendant culture and aesthetic the way that Grigoriadis’ 2004 article described. 

Sheima Amir-Araghi, 21, a third year student at UCSC, said that she and her peers did not see weed as a “lifestyle.”

“Maybe it’s not your personality as much as it used to be in 2004,” Amir-Araghi said. She was doubtful that there was still a “hippie culture” at the school — at least not in the way it was embodied by the stoner students profiled in Grigoriadis’ story, who wore dirndl skirts, “marijuana-leaf necklaces” and smoked out of a 2-foot-tall bong. 

“Cannabis flower shirts, and like a rasta hat or something … I don’t think it’s like that anymore,” Amir-Araghi added. 

Indeed, the title of Grigoriadis’ story, “The Most Stoned Kids on the Most Stoned Day on the Most Stoned Campus on Earth,” suggests a superlative that might no longer apply to UCSC. 

Yet if UC Santa Cruz is no longer the preeminent stoner school, it might be not merely due to changes in youth preferences, but also due to broader political and cultural shifts. With cannabis’ legalization in many states, the plant is less associated with a hippie subculture. Aesthetically, dispensaries where weed is legally sold don’t resemble hippie drug dens, but rather have a clean, professional look to promote a more broad appeal. 

”Dispensaries just look like Apple Stores now,” Amir-Araghi said.

Indeed, in contrast to the recent past, cannabis has become big business, no longer the realm of hippie growers and smugglers. Even John Boehner — the former GOP speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives who once said he was “unalterably opposed” to marijuana legalization — did an about-face and joined the board of a cannabis cultivation and dispensary firm. In other words, weed is mainstream. 

The UCSC stoner culture that comes through crystal clear in Grigoriadis’ story was driven by the fact that weed was illicit, she said. Now that it’s legal in California and many other states, “there’s no more subculture, it’s just the culture,” Grigoriadis said. “Why would you tie your identity to weed? Like, every 13-year-old can get it at a bodega.” 

Students agreed with Grigoriadis’ assessment that cannabis subculture doesn’t exist as much now that cannabis is normalized. “It doesn’t have one culture anymore,” Amir-Araghi said. “The archetypes have definitely expanded.”

Grigoriadis sees a new intoxicant that has largely displaced cannabis: the digital world — meaning social media, video games and the internet. “There is such a crazy, surreal, mind-bending space” in our phones, she said. “We don’t even care about [cannabis] anymore.” 

Likewise, the way students socialize — or don’t — is affected by weed just as it is affected by phones. Studies show that Gen Z — meaning young people born between 1997 and 2012, who comprise most undergraduates currently — is far more shy than their millennial counterparts; hence, the decline of stoner culture could also stem from a generational disinterest in drugs that bridle socializing. And it doesn’t help that this is the generation that was socially stunted by the pandemic, which led to months of isolation and inhibited the annual 4/20 gatherings at Porter Meadow in 2020 and 2021.

“Unfortunately, I feel like there has been kind of an antisocial trend in the culture, and I think that weed can be part of that,” UCSC student Raven Fonseca Jensen said. “I think smoking weed can be social, but I do think, unlike drinking, it can make people a little more turned inwards.”

Despite UCSC’s changing reputation, current students say that pot is still a popular drug on campus. “People prefer weed over alcohol,” said Amir-Araghi. 

Fonseca Jensen agreed. “I do think a lot of my friends definitely got heavier into weed usage at UCSC,” the 21-year-old junior said.

Cannabis is “pretty much everywhere,” said Farina Salam, 19. “Like, you take a deep breath, pretty much anywhere here, you’re gonna smell traces of it.” 

As a first-year student, Salam had yet to attend the 4/20 gathering at Porter Meadow but she’s anxiously awaiting her initiation into the unsanctioned annual campus tradition. “I’m excited,” she said. “It’s supposed to be super fun.”

Two students in UC Santa Cruz’s journalism class, Ashley Palma-Jimenez and Akshant Lanjewar, helped conduct interviews for this story.