“For those who are boy, it’s already legalized”

inequalities in access to cannabis from na etnography with growers from Sergipe and Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This ethnographic report is part of my master's research carried out between 2023 and 2025, which focused on the practices of cultivation and access to marijuana in Brazil, more specifically with interlocutors from the states of Rio de Janeiro and Sergipe. I used interviews with these interlocutors, who shared stories about the beginning and maintenance of the technical knowledge of cultivation, demonstrating the disputes involving the commercialization of marijuana derivatives in the legal and illegal markets. In this text, I present an ethnographic account in which I describe my personal experience of becoming a “medical marijuana patient” in Brazil, addressing the bureaucratic procedures for effective access to the product, the costs and the start of medical treatment. The interaction with growers of the plant and my personal experience as a patient enabled me to understand the networks of knowledge, cultures and exchanges related to the circulation of cannabis-derived products, as well as making it possible to observe the disputes and contradictions in public policies on drugs, specifically externalizing the inequalities in access to cannabis in Brazil.