South Africa: Cannabis Bill Resurfaces with Dramatic New Commercial Use Clause (Section 3) That Creates Great Legal Confusion

As published in Cannbiz Africa

The Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill (CPPB) raised its head in Parliament again with a new clause that opens up the possibility for commercial trade in cannabis.

But MP’s argued that the new clause, Secton 3, will also open up a whole new can of worms as it changed the nature of the Bill entirely. And it appears inevitable that public participation in the process is going to have to be re-opened and the Bill redrafted.

Senior State Advocate Sarel Robbertse, who presented the redrafted version to the Justice and Correctional Services Portfolio Committee on 8 March 2022, was also not happy with Section 3. He indicated that he’d been strong-armed by the Department of Trade and Industry to include the clause even though it was “in contravention of our international legal obligations”.

Robbertse said the DTI’s instruction was for the Bill to “authorize” a commercial framework for cannabis and for other national legislation to “enable” commercial trade.

Robbertse said the new clause indicated that future national legislation may provide for different classes or categories of cannabis and that such legislation “must” encourage BEE, “particularly the Rastafarian and other black communities that may have been prejudiced in the past”.

He said any new legislation “must provide for measures to minimize harm associated with recreational use; it must provide for demand reduction mechanism must provide for population monitoring of the abuse associated with cannabis; must provide for public education; such legislation must limit access to under 18’s, must prohibit advertising of cannabis, and provide a framework for quality testing and oversight mechanisms, regulated packaging and labelling, and regulated purchase as well as  the establishment of a National Cannabis Advisory Committee, which must persist with such measures”.

He said “commercial activities in respect of recreational cannabis are authorized, even though this is in contravention to our international obligations, but that national legislation has to be enacted specifically to allow this”.

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