High Company is our editorial series spotlighting the women shaping cannabis culture in real time through medicine, media, policy, food, and the daily rituals that rarely make it into the marketing.
VANESSA LAVORATO
HIGH COMPANY · No. 01
cookbook author
host
edible maker
Marigold Sweets
Bong Appétit
Incredible Edibles Thailand
The Edibles Club
How to Eat Weed and Have a Good Time
Los Angeles, CA
“Edibles in stores are usually candies because they’re shelf stable. For more health-conscious consumers, cooking with cannabis at home opens up new doors to medicating without involving our lungs.”
Vanessa Lavorato has spent more than a decade making edibles feel less like a novelty and more like a practice. She founded Marigold Sweets in 2010, later cohosted and culinary-produced VICE’s Bong Appétit, created and hosted Incredible Edibles Thailand, and now runs The Edibles Club, where she teaches people how to make better edibles at home. Across all of it, her focus is the same: flavor, consistency, accessibility, and a kind of dosing literacy that makes cannabis feel less intimidating and more usable.
WHAT DOES 4/20 MEAN TO YOU
“A celebration with my friends of the plant that helps me navigate this world smoothly and an excuse to eat a lot of edibles. Not that I need one.”
“In my cookbook, How to Eat Weed and Have a Good Time, I have a Formula for an Ethical Dose.”
Vanessa Lavorato has spent over a decade turning edibles into something more precise, more thoughtful, and way less mystified. Through Marigold Sweets, Bong Appétit, Incredible Edibles Thailand, The Edibles Club, and her cookbook How to Eat Weed and Have a Good Time, she’s built a body of work around making infusion accessible without flattening it — flavor-first, dose-aware, and grounded in the idea that you do not need a “cannabis chef” to make something great at home.
RUTH JAZMÍN AGUIAR
HIGH COMPANY · No. 02
policy
economic development
operator support
CEO + founder
Creatrix Management Group
treasurer
Latino Cannabis Alliance
Los Angeles, CA
“The biggest gap between policy and lived reality is sustainability.”
Ruth Jazmín Aguiar works where cannabis policy becomes real — in budgets, in city systems, in operator survival. Through Creatrix Management Group, she works at the intersection of cannabis regulation, economic development, and what policy actually does once it leaves the page. She describes her work as living in two worlds at once: alongside government, helping shape policy; and outside it, supporting operators and entrepreneurs navigating the reality of that policy every day. As treasurer of the Latino Cannabis Alliance, she is also part of building collective power and making sure Latino voices are not simply present in the industry, but leading it.
WHAT DOES 4/20 REPRESENT TO YOU NOW, WORKING INSIDE GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS ADVOCATING FOR CANNABIS POLICY
“Working alongside government, 4/20 has taken on a different meaning. It represents accountability.”
“Recent ICE raids across California have exposed the vulnerability of the Latino workforce, which makes up a significant portion of the cannabis labor force.”
Ruth Jazmín Aguiar brings the policy version of that reality into focus. Her work is not just about access, but about whether people can stay: whether operators can survive taxes, fees, and compliance; whether policy actually functions in practice; whether the industry is willing to talk honestly about labor, immigration risk, and who is still being left behind. Her read on 4/20 is one of the sharpest in the series: joy, yes — but also accountability.
MO SMYTH
HIGH COMPANY · No. 03
Mo Smyth, BSN, RN
registered nurse
wellness educator
continuing education provider
20 years clinical nursing
5 years cannabis education
Mendocino, CA
“Cannabis offers value far beyond its products or cannabinoids, because it has a co-evolutionary bond with humans through the endocannabinoid system.”
Maureen “Mo” Smyth, BSN RN, brings a clinical frame to cannabis that still leaves room for wonder. After 20 years as a registered nurse, she shifted her focus toward cannabis education and continuing education, driven by a growing interest in how cannabis-derived compounds actually interact with the body. Her work centers on the endocannabinoid system, but her personal relationship with cannabis is shaped by the realities of working in medicine: she is locked out of THC use, so her own routine leans on CBG for peace and calm, CBD for resilience and clarity, and a broader practice of education and advocacy in the meantime.
WHAT DOES 4/20 MEAN TO YOU
“4/20 is a celebration of the great spirit, creativity and therapeutic experience of cannabis consumption.”
“As a nurse actively working in medicine, I am locked out of using THC. I smoke CBG for peace & calm. I take CBD for resilience, clarity and positivity of mind in a mad world.”
Mo Smyth’s work sits at the intersection of clinical knowledge, cannabinoid education, and the strange contradictions of modern cannabis. She speaks fluently about the ECS, dose-dependence, and long-term wellness, but one of the most revealing parts of her story is structural: as a nurse, she can advocate for THC more freely than she can use it. That tension runs through her work and gives it weight.
SHELBY HUFFAKER
HIGH COMPANY · No. 04
public health
advocacy
social equity
public health research coordinator, University of California, San Diego
chair, Americans for Safe Access San Diego
treasurer, Cannabis Education Project
The War on People
San Diego, CA
“Access to legal cannabis is the greatest it has ever been in the U.S., at least in the past century. However, that doesn’t mean we can sit back and relax.”
Shelby Huffaker works in the part of cannabis culture where public health, policy, and implementation all collide. By day, she is a public health research coordinator at the University of California, San Diego, focused on strategies to reduce the harms associated with substance use. Outside that role, she chairs the San Diego chapter of Americans for Safe Access, serves as treasurer of the Cannabis Education Project, and writes The War on People, a blog about the ways health gets weaponized for power and profit in cultural crusades like the War on Drugs. Her work is rooted in making systems legible — and making clear how much work still sits beneath the language of legalization.
WHAT DOES 4/20 MEAN TO YOU
“For me, 4/20 is a time to reconnect with the culture of cannabis, particularly the roots of the legalization movement.”
“Many people use cannabis as a harm reduction tool in their everyday lives… even when their use might not be explicitly medicinal.”
High Company is our editorial series spotlighting the women shaping cannabis culture in real time — the people holding onto the nuance while everything around them gets flattened into product, branding, or politics. Shelby Huffaker brings a public health lens that never loses sight of daily life: the PAX session at night, the post-run muscle relief, the writer’s block fix, the policy fight still underway. Through Americans for Safe Access, the Cannabis Education Project, and The War on People, her work keeps returning to the same point: access has expanded, but rights, equity, harm reduction, and scheduling still require active defense.
Written by Jackie Bryant
