Successful Stoners: Luna Vargas, The Cannabis Crusader Bridging Two Continents

This special feature was made possible thanks to the Gabo Foundation and the Fund for Research and New Narratives on Drugs. You can read the original in Spanish on El Planteo. Learn about more Successful Stoners here.

Luna Vargas is a teacher in Anthropology and Ethnomusicology, but she could very well be a French film actress: the rebellious protagonist of a film by Jean Luc Godard. Her retro look, and thick-rimmed, pointy glasses amplify the colorful dresses she usually wears, billowy fabrics adorned with figures and patterns from another era. The fact that our interview is taking place via video call from Paris helps us appreciate the nostalgic air that Luna gives off, reinforced by her words of wisdom. Thinking about it, she could also pass as a professor at the Sorbonne, one of those activists from the sixties, launching revolutions from an apartment in Montmartre or Bastille, set off by philosophical gatherings fueled by Moroccan hashish. 

Luna seems from another time, but her mind is very here, in the present; she is an essential part of the cannabis movement in Brazil, even if he lives in Canada and spends most of her time traveling the world, attending cannabis conferences in places like Malta (one of the most recent countries to legalize access to the plant). Although she moves across borders with great ease, she keeps one foot in her country of origin, remembering her childhood in Alto Paraíso, a small town in the state of Goiás. It was here, high on Brazil's Central Plateau, where the tropical savannah competes in density against dozens of bountiful waterfalls, that Luna had her first encounter with cannabis. 

It was inevitable. Alto Paraíso is one of those places where they say UFOs are frequently sighted, a region that brings together reiki healers, permaculture experts, biodynamic growers, yoga teachers, and alternative medicine practitioners. It’s a cradle of experimentation, of connection with Mother Earth, a region where consciousness is naturally taken to extremes. In Luna's inner circle, cannabis was becoming prevalent and it was only a matter of time before she had the opportunity to try the plant. But it wasn't until 2018, when he attended Burning Man, that she fully connected with ganja. 

Known for being a festival where anything goes, an event that borders on the ceremonious and the banal, excess, and nudity (both of the attendees and of the Nevada desert), Burning Man is a place that encourages exploration. There, Luna felt for the first time the healing effects of cannabis: "I understood the potential that this flower had to cure pain, and I began to investigate more on the subject," she said. “I discovered what the endocannabinoid system was and realized that all animals have it. I discovered a new universe and understood that our relationship with the plant is not only social and cultural—fields of academic interest for me—but there is also a biological and anatomical connection that allows our bodies to benefit from cannabinoid molecules.”

Luna Vargas - Founder of InFlore - Brasil

That epiphany led Luna to leave Brazil for the north, landing in Canada in 2018, a country that was in the early stages of legalizing cannabis. Vancouver welcomed her with more than 100 dispensaries open (some of which she worked at). She was able to learn even more about the plant and the industry by serving as a budtender. Part of her job included differentiating between different plant varieties, recommending the right terpene profiles for customers' needs, and understanding how the company's operational chain worked—from growing to drying, processing, packing, and selling. Luna arrived in Canada planning to stay only a couple of months, but the more she learned, the more curious she was to expand her knowledge and ended up staying for almost 4 years. Suddenly Luna was making herself known in the industry, not only locally but also in Brazil, her home, a place that has been fighting for the legalization of maconha. 

“In my country, the cannabis user continues to be stigmatized; it’s a remnant of colonialist mentalities that oppressed African slaves who consumed it as part of their beliefs and as a medicine,” Luna said. “Today it has become a classist issue; whoever uses it is signaled as a homeless person, as a problem for society. I want to help change that mentality,” adds Luna. “And it's not just in the cities. In Alto Paraíso, despite the fact that it is consumed freely, even my mother reminded me about the neurons that it was burning and the risks of losing my mind. There’s a generational fear instilled by more than a century of propaganda. Even the Ayahuasca groups don’t consider cannabis to be a sacred plant. Brazil has many negative preconceptions that have entered all sectors.”

Education is a fundamental part of the normalization process of weed, resulting in greater acceptance that leads to a consensus and laws on the cultivation, sale, and use of cannabis. Luna is clear about it, and that is why she set up InFlore, a virtual course for those who are interested in the subject of marijuana and/or want to work in the industry. Through different virtual modules, Luna has created a complete scheme that allows understanding the different pillars of cannabis—from in-depth prohibitionism, the biology behind the effects of the plant, and the laws that have led the North to understand the chain value of cannabis. 

Applying the rigor and the tools learned in academia, Luna has created a dynamic course that highlights the key moments that have helped the US, Canada, and other countries that have joined legalization to transition from marginalization to commercialization, implementing a legal framework that—despite being volatile and malleable—serves as a reference for countries that need guidance to join global legalization. “InFlore is focused on training cannabis consultants,” Luna said. "Our mission is to promote knowledge about cannabis, seeking to strengthen the nascent industry with hundreds of students from more than 15 countries where the plant is already legal or is in the process of becoming legal."

Offering this course remotely has allowed Luna to be a digital nomad, a cannabis hound who follows the movement's most important events and fairs. That is why today Luna is in Paris but tomorrow she’s going to Portugal for an exhibition dedicated to marijuana, where she will be connecting with more and more people, opening her mind and field of action. She will be in Europe for the foreseeable future, sharing what she learns in places like Luxembourg or Germany, where cannabis has recently reached legal status. 

We can add to Luna —under penalty of offending her academic soul—exceptional qualities as a travel reporter because she doesn't stop traveling and neither does her journaling. Following Luna on networks is to be part of her adventures and share intimacies: from the weed, she smokes to the hemp-based products she uses, as well as gastronomic reviews of the places where she calms her munchies, each trip she posts about is complete with up-to-date information about the science and sociocultural relationships of humans with the plant. 

Luna is as multifaceted as marijuana itself. 

Illustration by @chyataller