CANNABIS FOR PRIVATE PURPOSES BILL: UPDATE

CANNABIS FOR PRIVATE PURPOSES BILL: UPDATE

• 12 September 2023
• Parliament
• SA Legal Academy

Please note: On 19 September 2023, the committee was granted permission to extend the Bill’s scope as requested (10th Order, final page of minutes)

The National Assembly’s Committee on Justice & Correctional Services has approached the House for permission to extend the subject of the Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill ‘to address issues relating to the best interest of the child’.

This will allow a Bill originally intended only to give effect to the Constitutional Court’s September 2018 ‘Prince judgement’ to become the ‘legislative vehicle’ with which also to address the March 2022 ‘Centre for Child Law judgment’.

An interim committee report tabled in the House on 12 September 2023 outlines the rationale underpinning this request. Essentially, until recently members ‘did not look beyond the (Bill’s) adult-centred focus to consider the best interest of children found in possession of cannabis and processed … within the criminal justice system’.

This is the third time the committee has approached the House for permission to extend the scope of the Bill. During 2022, it was initially authorised to make provision for:

• ‘commercial activities in respect of recreational cannabis’
• ‘the cultivation, possession and supply of cannabis plants and cannabis by organisations for religious and cultural purposes on behalf of their members’
• respecting ‘the right to privacy of an adult person … (using) cannabis for palliation or medication’, and later for
• covering hemp.

At this stage, a revised version reflecting these provisions has yet to become available.

• parliamentary papers (page 5)
• Bill (as originally tabled in 2020)
• ‘Prince judgment’
• ‘Centre for Child Law judgment’

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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