South Africa occupies a unique position in the rapidly developing legal cannabis market. With a government that seeks to legalize and develop the cannabis and hemp sectors as a sunshine industry and a private and community sector desperately willing to engage, this should be a match made in heaven. Yet the country finds itself in a regulatory quagmire with market forces, both legal and illegal, now in control. Cannabiz Africa is your front row on the torturous journey towards a regulated adult-use commercial market.
Professor David Katerere’s team at the Cannabis Hub has launched a landrace research project that seeks to document and commercialize local seed heritage. Among the Hub’s aims is to upskill indigenous farmers in agro-processing so they can add value to landrace biomass.
South Africa’s cannabis landraces hold significant medicinal properties that are only just being discovered. In fact, researchers are still determining how many indigenous landraces there are, with the African Cultural Heritage Trust having identified up to 40 different strains across all nine provinces.
SAHPRA’s Section 21 application process appears to have collapsed and the impact of the bureaucratic breakdown is having a knock on effect beyond medical cannabis access. The Pharmaceutical Society says the sector as a whole is experiencing severe supply chain disruptions requiring alternatives to registered medicine and Section 21 is not the answer.
Cannabis regulations are confusing everyone and are due for an overhaul at some future point. But in the meantime, if you looking for regulated access to cannabis, FGFA’s Ami Heystek spells out your options
Heritage Day should mean something particular to South Africa’s cannabis sector. We cannot demand inclusion, investment and regulatory reform from government while allowing division, territorialism and competing interests within the industry to weaken the case we make together.
KwaZulu Nata’s Verulam Community Police Forum has warned that drug dealers posing as ‘sweet vendors’ are selling cannabis to schoolkids in full view of the public. This comes after a man was arrested after dispensing cannabis flower to kids from biscuit buckets hidden among the sweets at his stall.
SAHPRA appears to have halted authorising all Section 21 medical cannabis applications for the past two months. This has created an uproar amongst genuine medical cannabis patients and service providers, who accuse SAHPRA of removing the only pathway to accessing medical cannabis without providing any alternative.
Cannabis mentoring company Kannelix has signed an MoU with the Vaal University of Technology to train 60 cannabis farmers in agro-processing and provide offtakes for their biomass. This is part of an MBOSA drive to mainstream traditional growers from the underground into the economic mainstream.
SACHIDA deputy chair Cian McClelland says South Africa needs a clear, reliable, licensed and standardized route to market for medical cannabis. He says licensed cultivators are capable to growing high quality product for South African medical cannabis patients but there is no clearly-regulated pathway to make this happen.
All key departments involved in cannabis reform are meeting in Pretoria on 15 and 16 September to develop a co-ordinated government approach to the problems facing the sector. They are doing so under a Western Cape High Court directive in response to the Gareth Prince urgent application to halt cannabis arrests.
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