Twenty patient associations from across northeastern Brazil are meeting in Fortaleza this month, inside a free three-day arts fair. The agenda item that matters: how to keep supplying patients when every step of the chain, from seed to prescription, sits on unstable ground.
Brazil’s medical cannabis system doesn’t look much like anything in the United States. There are no dispensaries. Patients get access through court authorizations and through nonprofit patient associations that cultivate and supply members, operating in a legal space that shifts with every new regulation and every judge.
From September 18 to 20, roughly twenty of those associations are gathering at the Dragão do Mar Center for Art and Culture in Fortaleza, capital of Ceará, for the second Northeastern Meeting of Cannabic Associations. It runs inside Febre de Arte, a free arts and culture fair now in its second year.
Two roundtables open the fair on Friday. The first covers associative governance and how associations can partner with each other under RDC 1014, the current Anvisa framework.
The second one is titled, plainly enough, “Insecurity in the routine of associations: from seed to cultivation, from prescription to logistics.” That title is the whole problem in one line. Associations in Brazil operate under constant legal uncertainty at every link, and the northeastern region gets substantially less attention than the wealthier southeast.
Confirmed participants include ABRACAM, Adapta, Verde Ouro, Pangaia, ACAFLOR, Risoflora Medicinal, Terra Livre, Ceará Saúde Livre, IRACEMA, AME-CE and Aliança Medicinal, among others.
Saturday’s talks bring Gabriel Gimenez, former director of ARICCAME, Argentina’s hemp and medical cannabis regulatory agency, and former national federal articulation director at INASE, the country’s seed institute, where he led the creation of Argentina’s national cannabis seed registry.
His talk is on seed regulation and why a national registry matters. It’s a more interesting subject than it sounds: seed genetics and traceability are where most cannabis regulatory systems either hold together or fall apart, and Brazil doesn’t have a registry of its own.
Gimenez pointed to “the importance of articulation beyond the southeastern region of the country, especially due to the cultivation potential and its social and economic benefits for the Brazilian Northeast.”
Saturday’s Febre Talks run under the theme “Science, innovation, and stories that transform.” Sunday’s shift to politics, regulation and access, with speakers including UFC medical school professor Dr. Magda Almeida, anti-prohibitionist lawyer Bianca Cardial, Marcha da Maconha Fortaleza co-founder Tamára Silva, and Luisa Cela, former Culture Secretary of Ceará.
Around all of that: short film screenings, visual art from Fortaleza-based artists, performances, and two nights of live music programmed with Auê Feira, a local fair that has drawn more than 500,000 people across 100-plus editions.
Everything is free.
High Times is a media partner of Febre de Arte 2026.
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