Hawaii dispensaries are offering lower prices and new products on the biggest marijuana holiday of the year — 4/20, or April 20.

“The industry expectations in sales are to double over the prior year. We are looking to do the same on Saturday,” said Emily Tom, director of retail operations and marketing for Noa Botanicals, which is launching new strains every week this month … and one of its most powerful strains to date for the celebration. “Besides Black Friday and the conventional holiday season, 4/20 is the holiday we put the most effort into,” she said, adding that it is a “spectacular sales day.”

Aloha Green Apothecary is lowering its prices by 30% to 50% for some of its 100 products, said Helen Cho, spokeswoman for the pot retailer.

Tom said, “We are already seeing an increase in traffic and sales this week (compared) to prior year — 60% increase in traffic and 48% increase in sales. We expect to see higher numbers than that on Saturday.”

Celebrated on April 20, 4/20 started as a code made up by California high school students in the 1970s referring to 4:20 p.m., the time the teens would meet to smoke pot, according to history.com. As more states embrace marijuana, the one-time underground holiday has become more mainstream, especially for states with recreational pot laws.

For Hawaii, which legalized medical cannabis in 2000, the unofficial holiday gives pot retailers an opportunity to promote the medicinal use of the drug since dispensaries are prohibited by law from advertising.

“4/20 is extremely important to the medicinal cannabis industry. However it serves as another way for us to bring knowledge of how cannabis helps so many patients,” she said. “We are approached constantly by people wanting to understand the industry and the plant. It’s invaluable time spent de-stigmatizing cannabis.”

Marijuana patients have nearly doubled in Hawaii over the past three years to 25,132 as of March 31 from 13,620 in March 2016.

“It’s growing,” said Teri Gorman, spokeswoman of Maui Grown Therapies, which has brought in Andrew Weil, who conducted the first published human trials on cannabis during the 1960s and acts as chief science officer for Maui Grown Therapies. He spoke at the third annual Maui Medical Cannabis Symposium on Thursday ahead of the holiday. The dispensary also is featuring Michael Backes, a researcher and author of “Cannabis Pharmacy: The Practical Guide to Medical Marijuana,” who will be on hand at the dispensary today, as he was last year, to meet with patients and answer questions about the drug.

Maui Grown is also adding a “huge range of products” including serums, capsules, live resin oils, tinctures and flowers, “including some with the highest potency in the state,” on 4/20. “We are expecting big crowds on Saturday,” Gorman said, “Double our usual business.”

Hawaii’s dispensaries are being careful not to promote 4/20 as a celebration of recreational marijuana use, since that hasn’t been legalized in Hawaii yet. A bill to legalize recreational use died in the Legislature this year.

“Instead of trying to make it feel like a recreational event we’re making it feel like it’s a celebration of cannabis and the fact that we have it as a medicine,” said Cho of Aloha Green Apothecary. “We’re trying to be respectful of the medical aspect of it. We’re not telling people to smoke up or light up just because it’s 4/20. It’s a day when we can celebrate how far our state has come.”

In some cases, the dispensaries are educating their customers as to what 4/20 is.

“People who know 4/20, they’re kind of like more recreational (users),” Cho said. “Most people over 50 — the people who are our main base — they’ve never heard of 4/20.”