Last year, hundreds of students smiled for the cameras, unknowingly taking part in what campus police have called "4/20 Ground Zero 2006." Though police do not traditionally issue citations on this day, those caught engaging in illicit behavior had their photos published online with a $50 reward offered for each individual identified.

With a serious of panels addressing drug prohibition, legalization and the failed war on drugs, it is at this juncture that the 59th annual Conference on World Affairs can intervene and offer insight into the nature of this social and legal predicament.

Friday afternoon's panel entitled, "4/20: The Harmless High" featured Patrick Anderson, Sanho Tree and David Watts engaging a packed room at the museum in a critical discussion of marijuana politics, policies and the various misconceptions surrounding the drug.

Tree is the director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., and has been in many documentaries pertaining to the failed international war on drugs.

"The more you fight it, the worse it becomes. Price, purity and availability are at a record level of failure in this war. Something's not going quite right here," Tree said.

Though Watts is a returning CWA participant, he was embarrassed to admit to his fellow panelists and to the audience that it was only moments before the panel began that he learned the meaning of "4/20." Watts is a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco in addition to being an acclaimed poet and a musician and has been featured on NPR's "All Things Considered;" in the past he's been invited to serve on panels related to spirituality and poetry.

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