New Bill expected to address cannabis conundrum

Legislation to finally allow for legal trade in cannabis is likely to be tabled in Parliament early next year as part of a series of initiatives that are underway to regulate – and regularise – the industry. President Cyril Ramaphosa earlier this year signed the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act into law, but it allows only for the private cultivation, possession and consumption of the plant. The Mail & Guardian reports that a new Bill is likely to be brought before Parliament to address this legal conundrum and in the process provide some kind of legal framework for the hundreds of cannabis retailers and dispensaries across SA who are currently breaking the law by trading. An overarching cannabis Act is likely to be tabled by the Trade, Industry & Competition Minister Parks Tau during the course of next year as part of a package of initiatives to speed up the process, which has dragged on since 2018. It would create an overarching framework for the various components of the industry, which thus far has been severely constrained by a lack of finance, complex and costly regulatory systems and uneven regulatory reform.

The government’s national cannabis master plan has been moved from the Agriculture Ministry, where it had been since 2021 and is now being driven by Tau’s department, due to a strategy review at Cabinet level. Government sources say the move was necessary for the creation and implementation of an overarching national policy to regulate the cannabis and hemp industries and to stimulate the creation of an infant industry. So far, nine government departments have been involved in the process, with Agriculture taking the lead, resulting in delays due to both bureaucratic drag and a lack of a common vision over how to develop cannabis policy and what it should entail. The M&G notes that the Constitutional Court in 2018 confirmed the right of South Africans to grow, possess and consume cannabis in private and ordered the government to pass the necessary legislation. It took the state six years to do so. A master plan was developed, but the process lost momentum, despite Ramaphosa convening an Operation Phakisa forum around cannabis to bring together all the roleplayers and get it moving again.