IN THE SPOTLIGHT: THE CANNABIS FOR PRIVATE PURPOSES BILL

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: THE CANNABIS FOR PRIVATE PURPOSES BILL

• 29 February 2024
• In the Spotlight
• SA Legal Academy

Tabled in Parliament on 1 September 2020 and eventually passed by both Houses on 27 February 2024, the Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill is now waiting to be signed into law and operationalised.

It responds to two Constitutional Court judgments.

On 18 September 2018, the Court found certain sections of the Drugs & Drug Trafficking Act, 1992, and the Medicines & Related Substances Act, 1965, ‘inconsistent with the right to privacy guaranteed by section 14 of the Constitution, but only to the extent that they prohibit the use, possession, purchase or cultivation of cannabis by an adult person in a private dwelling for his or her consumption’.

On 3 March 2022, the Court found sub-section 4(b) of the Drugs & Drugs Trafficking Act, 1992, unconstitutional and ruled that ‘an alternative’ to criminalisation be found to address ‘the prohibited use, possession of, or dealing in, cannabis by children – with due regard to the best interest of the child’. This particular judgment having been made well after the Bill was tabled in Parliament, the proposed new piece of legislation made no provision for dealing with the matter. As a result – with the intention of rectifying this – the National Assembly’s Justice & Correctional Services Committee was obliged to approach the House for permission to insert provisions in the Bill beyond its original scope. On 19 September 2023, the committee was granted permission to do so.

This is noting that – earlier in the parliamentary process – the committee had sought and been granted permission from the House to revise the Bill in order to provide for:

• the cultivation, possession and supply of cannabis plants and cannabis by organisations for religious and cultural purposes on behalf of their members
• the right to privacy of an adult person using cannabis for palliation or medication, and
• hemp cultivation for commercial purposes.

Against that backdrop, once enacted and in force the new piece of legislation will:

• require that the authorities ‘respect the right to privacy of an adult person to use or possess cannabis’
• ‘regulate the use or possession of cannabis by an adult person’
• ‘provide for the expungement of criminal records of persons convicted of possession or use of cannabis or dealing in cannabis on the basis of a presumption’, and
• provide for the commercial production of hemp.

It will nevertheless ‘prohibit … dealing in cannabis’. This is according to a memorandum on the revised Bill’s objects.

• Bill’s ‘B’ version (now waiting to be signed into law and operationalised)
• version tabled in Parliament in 2020
• September 2028 ruling
• March 2022 ruling

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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