It’s now five years since the Constitutional Court found that the sections of the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act were found unconstitutional.
It’s also going on eight years since legislators decided to remove references from cannabis in the Drugs Act.
Yet the Drugs Act is still in force and being used by SAPS to pursue cannabis-related cases, particularly in KwaZulu Natal.
Drugs Act Just Won’t Go Away
The Drugs Act is the core piece of legislation holding back South African cannabis reform and either the Government has neither the will or the capacity to enforce the changes to the law it has already signalled that it intends doing.
Dr Andry Gray (pictured here) Senior Pharmacology Lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and Co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Pharmaceutical Policy and Evidence Based Practice, says South Africa has a long and complex history with regard to cannabis and was one of the original motivators behind its international prohibition in 1923.
Cannabis remained underground until the 2018 Constitutional Court judgment overturned almost a century of established practice.
However, Government’s attempts to walk back from prohibition have been less successful, and its attempts to dismantle the edifice that it had created has resulted in the shambles that goes for cannabis reform today.
Dr Gray wrote in the public interest health journal, Spotlight, published on 3 December 2025, that: “There has been much confusion and misunderstandings about how cannabis and associated products are regulated in South Africa, with government’s own missteps adding to the uncertainty.
“Cannabis policy therefore remains in flux, and the entire legislative process has been marked by missteps, missed steps, reverses, ambivalence and confusion.
Some pieces of the picture are in place, but others remain uncertain or incomplete” writes Dr Gray in an article entitled ‘Where are we on the road to more coherent cannabis regulation?’
He answers his own question: the country still has a long road to travel until it reaches Destination Coherence!
“Bringing the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act into alignment with the Constitutional Court judgment has been far more complex than the Medicines Act and is still a work in progress” says Dr Gray.
The section of the Drugs Act which enabled the Minister of Justice to make schedules listing substances in different categories was found to be unconstitutional in 2020.
Future changes to the schedules will require an Act of Parliament. Distinct from the Schedules to the Medicines Act, these lists designate which substances, for example are considered “Undesirable Dependence-Producing Substances”, the possession of which may be a criminal offence.
Cannabis Act Still Not in Force 18 Months After the President Signed it into Law
Instead, the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services tabled a separate Bill in 2019, which was finally passed as the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act, 2024.
While that Act has been assented to by the President, it has not yet been promulgated and no regulations have been issued. The legislation is therefore not yet in operation.
Regulations are needed, for example, to specify the amounts of cannabis that can be cultivated, possessed or transported. Most importantly, though enabling the possession or cultivation of cannabis in a private place, and therefore personal consumption by an adult, the Act does not enable the commercialisation of cannabis for “recreational” or “adult use”, as is the case with alcoholic beverages or tobacco products.
South Africa’s Cannabis Master Plan, which envisages three separate value chains, covering medicinal cannabis, hemp, and adult use, is now being driven by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC). The DTIC plans to submit a Hemp and Cannabis Commercialisation Policy to Cabinet by April 2026 and to table an Overarching Cannabis Bill by mid-2027.
SAHPRA Not Transparent About Medical Cannabis Situation
The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) has issued just over a hundred licences for the cultivation and export of cannabis for medicinal purposes. These licences are for the preparation of the raw material from which medicines could be made, but no THC-containing products have yet been registered in South Africa.
SAHPRA does not report on the number of section 21 permits issued to individual patients seeking access to THC-containing medicines, nor on the sources of unregistered medicines approved in that manner (section 21 permits allows for access to medicines not registered by SAHPRA).
An industrial market for low-THC cannabis is already well established and the necessary steps to enable its growth are now in place. However, the ill-informed ban on the inclusion of any cannabis components in foodstuffs, which was issued and then rapidly repealed in 2025, is indicative of the lack of coherence in government policy.
The challenge remains the commercialisation of an adult use market, and whether that will enable the involvement of the small-scale rural growers who have traditionally met demand for the product.
