Bill providing for private use, cultivation of cannabis under fire in Parly
Parliament’s justice portfolio committee is hosting public hearings on the cannabis for Private Purposes Bill.
CAPE TOWN - A draft bill providing for the private use and cultivation of cannabis has come under fire at Parliament.
Parliament’s justice portfolio committee is hosting public hearings on the cannabis for Private Purposes Bill.
The bill is necessary after the Western Cape High Court in 2017 ruled sections of the Drugs Act and Drug Trafficking Act unconstitutional, effectively allowing adults to use and grow the plant for personal use in the privacy of their own homes.
The order was confirmed by the Constitutional Court and Parliament has to meet a deadline to pass the new legislation.
Jeremy Acton was a plaintiff in the Western Cape High Court case that effectively decriminalised the use of cannabis by adults for private purposes.
Now the pro-marijuana lobbyist said the draft bill would unreasonably limit the rights he has enjoyed since the court’s ruling.
“The bill is an unreasonable, unjustified, irrational and intentionally malicious limitation of my rights which arose from the judgment, which I currently enjoy and am not prepared to forfeit.”
Rastafarian lawyer, Gareth Prince, the chairperson of the Cannabis Development Council of SA, has been fighting the criminalisation of marijuana since 1989. He said the draft bill was fragmented and not aligned with the Cannabis Master Plan being developed by the government.
“It continues to use racist, outdated and unscientific arguments to hold that cannabis is part of the problem, instead of being part of the solution – cannabis, frankly, represents the most realistic chance that SA has of empowering its 12 million unemployed people and lifting them up from the quagmire of poverty, joblessness and desperation.”
Prince said South Africa had the chance of being at the forefront of a multibillion-dollar global industry and that the bill should take a holistic, rather than narrow, approach.
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