Marijuana is one of the most commented-upon regular topics on the Lycos 50. It's been more than a year since we last took a look at why the drug is so popular online, so we thought we would revisit the subject to see how things have changed.
This is actually a timely topic for today. April 20 is known as the "stoner new year" because of the ubiquity of the number 420 in marijuana culture. The urban legend says that 420 is either police code for pot-smoking in progress or the number of compounds in THC, the actual drug in the marijuana leaves. Actually, according to High Times Magazine, the simpler explanation is that 4:20pm was the time set for the daily meeting of the stoners of San Rafael High School in 1971, and the number has spread from there.
Marijuana entered the Lycos 50 early on and since then it has been on the list each week except for two: the last week of 1999 and the last week of 2000. In addition, the drug is much lower-rated in the summertime. For example, the average position of marijuana in July and August 2000 was #38; the average position of marijuana in November and December was #18.
Those facts seem to point to the theory that most marijuana searches come from students, since the search traffic dips in summertime and drops off the chart during Christmas break only to return, just as strong, a week later.
How popular is marijuana? Last week it received 180 percent more searches than the second-most popular drug, Ecstasy/MDMA, and 230 percent more searches than the most popular legal drug, Viagra.
We don't count dope or weed in our Lycos 50 tallies because there's really no way to tell what those people are looking for -- though common sense suggests that many of them are looking for pot. That aside, here are last week's top searches associated with marijuana.
MARIJUANA
CANNABIS
GROWING MARIJUANA
HIGH TIMES (marijuana magazine)
BONGS
MARIJUANA PICTURES
POT
LEGALIZATION OF MARIJUANA
CANABIS
MARAJUANA
420
MARIJUANA SEEDS
MARIJUANA EFFECTS
HOW TO GROW MARIJUANA
MEDICAL MARIJUANA
MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION
MARIHUANA
MARIJUANA PICS
GANJA
MARIJAUNA
What stands out on this list, when compared to last year's, is the rising popularity of growing your own. Last year, growing marijuana was 17th on the list of marijuana searches. Now it's third. Searches for marijuana seeds and marijuana hydroponics have also increased.
The other topic which is clearly on the rise is marijuana legalization, and the related topic of medical marijuana. This has been a very hot topic in 2001; searches for legalization of marijuana have tripled since the beginning of the year. Marijuana legalization gets many more searches than the more generic query drug legalization.
Monday, we'll take a look at other drugs online and answer the question a few readers have asked: Where's the ecstasy craze?
