An Eastern Cape government department is calling for the unconditional release of everyone jailed for dealing in or possession of cannabis and also the general decriminalisation of the plant.

A Daily Dispatch report says the provincial Department of Rural Development & Agrarian Reform’s Dr Mfundo Maqhubela – speaking on behalf of the provincial government and stakeholders – was addressing the Justice & Constitutional Development Portfolio Committee during a three-day session in Parliament on the proposed Cannabis for Private Purpose Bill.

Maqhubela submitted: ‘The proposed Bill in its current form excludes any person who does cannabis. It also fails to make provision for how people can access seed to cultivate cannabis.’

He argued that the Bill served to effectively criminalise traditional healing, adding that the suggested small quantities for cultivation and storage for personal use were inadequate for traditional healers as they used cannabis for professional purposes to assist their clients, as directed by the amakhosi, their ancestors, in the privacy of their homes.

Gareth Prince, of the Cannabis Development Council of SA, said the Constitutional Court judgment of 2018 finally catapulted SA into a position that no other government in the world had been in before.

He said the Bill impacted negatively on people’s rights to equality, dignity, freedom and privacy in that it still proposed to use the criminal penal code to regulate cannabis.

‘We call for the expansion of the Constitutional Court ruling based on the right to privacy, to include the ability to cultivate, extract, process, manufacture, and sell cannabis-based products for recreational use, along the same lines that alcohol and tobacco are regulated. The recreational cannabis market is a massive potential revenue generator for the fiscus while simultaneously positioning us to get ahead of the substance abuse concern,’ he said.

Full Daily Dispatch report