An overarching cannabis act is likely to be tabled by the minister of trade, industry and competition Parks Tau during the course of next year. (Photo: X)
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 signed the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act into law the day before the 29 May elections but it allows only for the private cultivation, possession and consumption of the plant.
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 the country who are at this point breaking the law by trading.
An overarching cannabis act is likely to be tabled by the minister of trade, industry and competition 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.
Thus 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.
In 2018, the constitutional court 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.
Policy development, industrial strategy and legislation would all now be coordinated within trade and industry, which will treat cannabis and hemp differently, another shift from the earlier approach.
This means there can be an immediate focus on issues like financing of hemp production itself, and downstream processing, while the longer-term process of regularising and regulating cannabis — and developing policy — is dealt with.
The regulation of hemp has been moved from the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority to the department of agriculture, a significant move in easing the restrictions on its growth, the sources said.
In future, the authority will only be involved in certification, regulating and testing of hemp produced for medical purposes and not biomass produced for built environment, textiles and other industrial purposes.
There is also a plan to revise the levels of THC allowed in hemp — a great relief for South African growers as it is particularly difficult to grow plants which comply with the current limit with the levels of sunlight this part of the world receives.
The proposed new THC level for hemp is 2%, a tenfold increase on the current 0.02%.
Trade and industry spokesperson Yamkela Fanisi confirmed that the move to trade and industry had taken place and that new legislation would be introduced where necessary as part of the process.
“The master plan is now with the [Department of Trade, Industry and Competition],” Fanisi said. “The department is working on the commercial strategy within the legal parameters. Medical cannabis will also be considered.”
“Where there is a need to amend legislation to optimise full commercialisation, a due process will be followed.”
Speaking at a conference on commercial hemp production in Durban earlier this month, Garth Strachan, Ramaphosa’s special advisor on cannabis, said the government’s role was to remove barriers to investment and to develop policy from seed all the way along the value chain.
Technological capacity needed to be improved, while the inclusion of small-scale growers through various forms of aggregation needed to be developed, an area in which the government had done “rather badly” thus far.
With regard to the master plan, Strachan said the trade and industry department would “take the lead” in the process, with agriculture acting as an enabling department to take advantage of opportunities in the hemp sector which was now “unconstrained by regulation”.
A hemp value-change development plan was in the process of being put together and would be put to government’s social partners, business, labour and communities for sign off.
Strachan said there were new and existing opportunities in the medical cannabis sector, which was constrained by regulations and would thus require regulatory reform going forward.
He said there was a “crisis of illegality” because the government had understandably moved slowly to regulate the sale of cannabis on the domestic market, which had resulted in a “free for all”.
This included the abuse of section 21 permits issued for growing medical cannabis for export and of the Traditional Health Practitioners Act by dispensaries and shops operating around South Africa.
While developing an industry, South Africa needed to ensure that it did not become an “outlier” and had to make sure that cannabis production remained in sync with international norms and standards.
“We need to exercise caution with our approach,” Strachan said.