A comprehensive cannabis bill is likely to be tabled by Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parkes Tau within the next year. (Photo: X)
A bill to finally allow legal trade in cannabis is likely to be introduced in Congress early next year as part of a series of ongoing efforts to regulate and normalize the industry.
President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act on the eve of the May 29 election, which only allows for the private cultivation, possession and consumption of cannabis.
A new bill could be introduced in Congress that would address this legal challenge and, in the process, provide some legal framework for the hundreds of cannabis retailers and dispensaries across the country whose transactions currently violate the law. expensive.
A comprehensive cannabis law is likely to be tabled by Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parkes Tau within the next year, as part of a series of efforts to speed up the process, which has been ongoing since 2018.
This would create a comprehensive framework for various elements of the industry, which have previously been severely constrained by lack of funding, complex and costly regulatory regimes, and uneven regulatory reform.
The government's National Cannabis Master Plan was transferred from the Ministry of Agriculture, which had been in place since 2021, following a ministerial strategy review and is now led by Tau's department.
Government officials say the move was necessary to develop and implement a comprehensive national policy to regulate the cannabis and hemp industry and stimulate the creation of a baby industry.
So far, nine government departments have been involved in this process, with agriculture taking the lead, but the result has been bureaucratic shackles and a lack of a common vision for how and what cannabis policy should be developed. The lack is causing delays.
In 2018, the Constitutional Court recognized South Africans' right to privately grow, own and consume cannabis, and ordered the government to pass the necessary legislation. It took the state six years to do so.
A master plan was drawn up, but the process lost momentum, even though Ramaphosa convened the Operation Phakisa Forum on Cannabis to bring together all the role players and get things running again.
Policy development, industrial strategy and legislation will all be coordinated within the trade industry, and cannabis and hemp will be treated differently, again a change from previous approaches.
This means that immediate focus can be placed on issues such as financing cannabis production itself and downstream processing, while addressing the long-term process of regularizing and regulating cannabis and developing policy. .
Cannabis regulation will be transferred from the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority to the Department of Agriculture, officials said, in a significant move to ease restrictions on cannabis cultivation.
In the future, the agency will only be involved in the certification, regulation and testing of hemp produced for medical purposes, and not biomass produced for the built environment, textiles or other industrial purposes.
There are also plans to review the permissible levels of THC in hemp, a huge relief for South African producers. The level of sunlight that this part of the world receives makes it particularly difficult to grow plants that comply with current restrictions.
The proposed new THC level for hemp is 2%, 10 times the current 0.02%.
Trade and Industry Spokesperson Yamukela Fanisi confirmed that the transition to trade and industry will take place and new legislation will be introduced as necessary as part of the process.
“The master plan is currently [Department of Trade, Industry and Competition]” Fanisi said. “The ministry is working on a commercial strategy within the legal framework. Medical cannabis will also be considered.”
“Due process will be followed if laws need to be amended to optimize full commercialization.”
Ramaphosa's special adviser on cannabis Garth Strachan, speaking at a conference on commercial cannabis production in Durban earlier this month, said the role of government is to remove barriers to investment and develop policies along the value chain from seed. He said it was true.
Technical capacity needs to be improved, while the inclusion of small-scale growers needs to be developed through various forms of aggregation, something the government has so far done “pretty badly” in this area.
Regarding the master plan, Strachan said the Department of Trade and Industry would “take the lead” in the process and act as the department to enable the agricultural sector to take advantage of the opportunities in the hemp sector, which is “no longer constrained by regulation.”
A development plan to transform the value of hemp is currently being finalized and will be submitted to governments, social partners, businesses, workers and communities for approval.
Strachan said there are new and existing opportunities in the medical cannabis sector, which are constrained by regulation and will require regulatory reform going forward.
He said there was a “crisis of illegality” because the government was understandably slow to regulate the sale of cannabis on the domestic market, resulting in “free for everyone”.
This included abuse of Section 21 permits issued to grow medical cannabis for export by pharmacies and stores operating across South Africa, as well as abuse of the Traditional Health Practitioners Act. .
While developing its industry, South Africa needed to ensure it did not become an “outlier” and ensured that cannabis production was in sync with international norms and standards.
“We have to be careful in our approach,” Strachan said.
