The tenfold increase in the acceptable THC limit in hemp is a proposal from the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC), which is now in charge of the Cannabis Master Plan.

This follows the removal of hemp (industrial cannabis) control from the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority to the Department of Agriculture, which will be the regulator and issue permits. Agriculture, in turn, has asked the DTIC to oversee policy going froward and drive the necessary legislative amendments..

In future, SAHPRA 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.

The planned revision of acceptable THC limits in hemp will come as a great relief for local growers. The South  African climate and abundant sunshine are known to cause a ‘THC spike’ in hemp – low THC cannabis cultivars experience an unpredictable increase in THC percentages.  

The fact that the Department of Agriculture specified a 0,2% THC limit for hemp two year ago when it took over control of permits, was ridiculed by many stakeholders as a lazy ‘cut and paste job’ of northern hemisphere hemp guidelines.

The new 2% THC limit being proposed is much more in line with countries like Mexico who have similar climatic conditions. It’s generally accepted that cannabis with a THC percentage of lower than five percent will not induce any psychoactive responses.

Paddy Harper reports in the Mail and Guardian that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s special advisor on cannabis, Garth Strachan, said that government’s role was to remove barriers to investment in the industrial cannabis sector and to develop policy from seed all the way along the value chain.

Strachan was speaking at a conference on commercial hemp production in Durban earlier this month. He said for the hemp industry to grow, technological capacity needed to be improved, while the inclusion of small-scale growers through various forms of aggregation needed to be developed. He admitted this was an area in which the government had done “rather badly” thus far.

With regard to the Cannabis Master Plan, Strachan said the DTIC 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”.

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