US Cannabis Shares Spike on News That the Plant is to Be "Derisked" Through Rescheduling One of South Africa’s poorest municipalities is pinning some of its development hopes on cannabis. Nyandeni in the Eastern Cape recently hosted a development summit where its mayor said the cannabis industry alone could create many jobs if it could be formalized. Cannabiz Africa/Luva Cataka, News 24 23/09/18, 10:00 [object Object] INTERNATIONAL BREAKING NEWS PREVIOUS NEXT Cannabiz Africa Newsline The Business Of Cannabis Coming Fresh every Week. Stay ahead in the cannabis industry! Subscribe to CANNABIZ AFRICA NEWSLINE for weekly insights on the business of cannabis. Fresh updates every week! Enter Your Email Join Thanks for subscribing!

CANNABIS INDUSTRY BREAKING NEWS THC Settles Appeal Bid Out of Court, Status of Private Clubs Remains Uncertain The Haze Club has reached an out-of court settlement with the Justice Department on its appeal court application to have private cannabis clubs legally recognized. The details of the settlement are confidential and in the absence of a court ruling, the legal status of cannabis clubs remains uncertain. Cannabiz Africa 17 November 2024 at 08:00:00 What must have come as a huge relief for THC director Neil Lidell and his co-accused Ben van Houten, is something of a disappointment to the rest of the cannabis industry. The issue at hand is the out of court settlement reached between Lidell’s lawyers and the State which led to his decision to withdraw his application to the Supreme Court of Appeal which was due to have been heard next Tuesday, 19 November 2024. The Haze Club (THC) lawyer Paul Michael Keichel told Cannabis Africa on 14 November 2024: “ THC’s appeal was withdrawn yesterday after an agreement was reached between the Appellants and the State Respondents. The terms of that agreement are necessarily confidential. ” Each party was ordered to pay its own costs. Keichel has so far not responded to questions as to what implications the settlement has for other private cannabis clubs. The SCA ruling had been eagerly awaited by private cannabis clubs who are seeking final legal certainty on their status. This means they continue to exist in a ‘grey zone’. Read the brief settlement ruling here. Fields of Green for All , which was amicus curiae (an interested party) in the matter, said it had received notice of the appellants withdrawal of their SCA appeal. “What we do know is that the case is now complete and we do not get further clarification on the legality of Dagga Private Clubs. We also know that the reasons for the settlement were personal but probably involved dropping of the criminal charges” said FGFA director Myrtle Clarke. This is a developing story. # Synergy Wellness: Building a Medical Cannabis Eco-System from the Ground Up Read Moving on Up! Cheeba’s Higher Certificate is Africa’s First Officially Recognized Cannabis Qualification Read Presidential Cannabis Advisor: ‘The Industry is in a Free-for-All and We Are Dealing With a Crisis of Illegality’ Read NEXT PREVIOUS Cannabiz Africa Newsline The Business Of Cannabis Coming Fresh every Week. Stay ahead in the cannabis industry! Subscribe to CANNABIZ AFRICA NEWSLINE for weekly insights on the business of cannabis. Fresh updates every week! Enter Your Email Join Thanks for subscribing!

Previous Next Lesotho’s MG Health Secures US$18M to Boost Production To Export Cannabis Flower and API’s to Key Export Markets Home African News South African News International News All News Marketplace Business News More Cannabiz Africa 7 May 2023 at 08:00:00 Lesotho’s cannabis fortunes may be changing for the better after leading cultivator MG Health secured new interest from international investors. CEO Andre Bothma says product purity is the key to meeting rapidy growing international demand. [object Object] Cannabiz Africa Newsline The Business Of Cannabis Coming Fresh every Week. Stay ahead in the cannabis industry! Subscribe to CANNABIZ AFRICA NEWSLINE for weekly insights on the business of cannabis. Fresh updates every week! Enter Your Email Join Thanks for subscribing! What Sets Us Apart ? Cannabiz Africa is the leading B2B news platform for the continent's cannabis industry, connecting you directly with key stakeholders. With over 4,000 unique monthly users and a growing audience of 1,500 engaged Newsline subscribers, we provide unmatched visibility for your brand. Advertise with us today to reach the heart of the industry! Click here, to advertise your brand, product and or service

Previous Next Ghana’s Mental Health Authority ‘Excited’ About Anti-Cannabis Court Ruling. Home African News South African News International News All News Marketplace Business News More Emmanuel Bonney 13 August 2022 at 03:00:00 Authority hails Supreme Court ruling that cannabis cultivation is unconstitutional, says social harms will outweigh economic benefits if cannabis is legalized. [object Object] Cannabiz Africa Newsline The Business Of Cannabis Coming Fresh every Week. Stay ahead in the cannabis industry! Subscribe to CANNABIZ AFRICA NEWSLINE for weekly insights on the business of cannabis. Fresh updates every week! Enter Your Email Join Thanks for subscribing! What Sets Us Apart ? Cannabiz Africa is the leading B2B news platform for the continent's cannabis industry, connecting you directly with key stakeholders. With over 4,000 unique monthly users and a growing audience of 1,500 engaged Newsline subscribers, we provide unmatched visibility for your brand. Advertise with us today to reach the heart of the industry! Click here, to advertise your brand, product and or service

CANNABIS INDUSTRY BREAKING NEWS Legislative Crisis Looms As Wrong Version of Cannabis Bill Circulated for Stakeholders Comment The deadline for public comment on the Cannabis Bill is the end of business on 19 January 2024, but a major legislative bungle has prompted stakeholders to call for the NCOP deadline to be pushed out an extra week. Brett Hilton-Barber 19 January 2024 at 07:00:00 Brett Pollack of Harambe Solutions says the version of the Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill being circulated by the National Council of Provinces for public comment is different from the one passed by the National Assembly. He says several key omissions continue to make the Bill unconstitutional. Cannabiz Africa understands he was in contact with Parliament’s committee secretary (SC Security and Justice) Gurshwyn Dixon on Thursday, 18 January 2024 to get the right version published for public comment. He was also seeking a week-long extension for comment once the right version of the Bill was circulated to stakeholders. This is yesterday morning’s correspondence from Pollack to Dixon, pointing out the error, which he says is “appalling and potentially disastrous”. “As suspected, the same omission appears in the version you have sent. There has been a major clerical or other error. The version of the Bill that was passed by the NA, indeed the core rights conferred by the Prince 3 judgment were the private cultivation, and use and possession by adults. The Bill’s unconstitutionality in both substance and process is now automatic. This is not something we should be making submissions on. The right of an adult to privately cultivate cannabis lies at the absolute core of the rights conferred by the Constitutional Court in Prince 3 – see point 11 of the order and the perhaps hundreds of other iterations throughout the judgment. The omission of this right from the cluster of Cannabis rights conferred re-criminalises the entire community, sending us back into the deepest and darkest corners of the prohibitionists Cannabis era. We therefore urgently request that the Select Committee republishes the B version of Bill 19-2020 with the word ‘cultivate’ in both the first bullet of the Preamble and in clause 2(1) – as below – prior to receiving submissions and, to these ends therefore, urgently extend the deadline for submissions by at least 7 days. Preamble “To— * respect the right to privacy of an adult person to use, possess or cultivate cannabis;” Clause 2(1) “ An adult person may— (a) use, possess or cultivate cannabis; and (b) without the exchange of consideration per occasion provide to, or obtain from, another adult person, cannabis,in a private place for a private purpose. ” Confusion over which version of the Bill was being circulated for public comment was f irst aired by Fields of Green for All in October last year already. # Synergy Wellness: Building a Medical Cannabis Eco-System from the Ground Up Read Moving on Up! Cheeba’s Higher Certificate is Africa’s First Officially Recognized Cannabis Qualification Read Presidential Cannabis Advisor: ‘The Industry is in a Free-for-All and We Are Dealing With a Crisis of Illegality’ Read NEXT PREVIOUS Cannabiz Africa Newsline The Business Of Cannabis Coming Fresh every Week. Stay ahead in the cannabis industry! Subscribe to CANNABIZ AFRICA NEWSLINE for weekly insights on the business of cannabis. Fresh updates every week! Enter Your Email Join Thanks for subscribing!

CANNABIS INDUSTRY BREAKING NEWS Sierra Leone: Voodoo Kush Addictions Spiralling; the Nation's Kids Are at Risk Substance abuse in West Africa is spiralling out of control, with hybrid drugs coming onto the market that are aimed soley at creating addiction. Cannabis is the base for fentynal-laced Voodoo Kush, which is creating a social health crisis. Here we take you to the streets of Freetown for how the new drug is affecting ordinary people. Ishmael Dumbuya 19 April 2024 at 10:00:00 An indepth look at the Voodoo Kush Crisis by the Concord Times , Freetown. At around 8:25 am, Tuesday 26th March 2024, this medium went to the Hastings Community, Western Area Rural, were youths crammed into a shack shrouded in Kush smoke. According to sources, Hastings is one the hubs where Kush is processed and mixed with highly addictive and deadly ingredients. Kush is a mysterious new zombie drug that's ravaging Sierra Leone - an epidemic described as the worst in the region. And amid fears, the crisis could destroy the youthful population - a shocking new twist: the use of ground-up human bones as one of the drug's ingredients READ: WTF! Voodoo Kush may include ground-up human bones! At Back Street, Hastings, there were scenes of young men standing and nodding, whereas their feet have swollen as if there was an emergence of Elephantiasis in the country, causing people to fall asleep while walking, fall over, bang their heads against hard surfaces and walk into moving traffic. Kush costs around five Leones per joint, which may be used by two or three people, with up to 40 joints being consumed in a day. This represents a massive spend on drugs and illustrates the addictive nature of the mixture, in a country where the annual income per capita is very minimal. The sachet costs 150 Leones, whereas the ounce is around 4 to 5 thousand New Leones. 'Blake', a dealer who refused to state his real name, explained to this medium that Kush is a mixture of fentanyl, tramadol, formaldehyde and now ground down human bones. According to 'Blake,' he went into Kush dealing because he couldn't secure a job and has many dependants. He however underscored that the drug is wreaking havoc in the country and killing dozens every week and many hospitalised. If this menace continues in the next years, there will be less agile youths left in the country, and the country will graduate to a narco state," he stated. The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency indicated that the drug is an amalgamation of the various chemicals and plants that mimic the natural (cannabinoid) THC found in cannabis. One of the ingredients of drug is fentanyl. Fentanyl is thought to originate in clandestine laboratories in China where the drug is manufactured illegally and shipped to West Africa. Tramadol has a similar source, across Asia. Formaldehyde, which can cause hallucinations, is also reported in this mixture. Responding to the ground human bones used, there was no definitive answer given, as to whether or not they occur in the drug, where such bones would come from, or why they might be incorporated into the drug. However, some Kush addicts present noted that grave robbers provide the bones. On Saturday 23rd September 2023, the Sierra Leone Police arrested Abdul Kamara, aka Biggie Ten, the owner of one of the biggest cartels in the city with a large amount of Kush and other dangerous drugs. According to sources, Biggie Ten is said to be one of the key chemists in the mixture of the Kush, and sells it in large quantities to other dealers in the city. According to the Inspector General of Police, Fayia Sellu, the Sierra Leone Police is working tirelessly to curb the use of dangerous drugs which is killing and destroying youths in the country, adding that whoever is caught will face the full force of the law. However, for many people, that is not the case, as people accuse the government of involvement in the trade, and using selective justice to hunt Kush barons in the country. With some even pointing fingers at the sister of President Bio, Admire Bio, as being the key importer of the drug. Allegations she denies. According to expert, the Sulphur content of the bones causes toxicity. Another reason might be the drug content of the bones themselves, if the deceased was a fentanyl or tramadol user. However, both are unlikely. Sulphur levels in bones are not high. Smoking Sulphur would result in highly toxic Sulphur dioxide being produced and inhaled. In the Waterloo Community, this medium interviewed addicts, and dealers at Tombo Junction where drivers have now resorted to the drug intake and have abandoned their profession. Christian Smith, a professional driver, who has now abandoned his driving and have delved into Kush intake, explained that he never intended to smoke the drug. He said his friends lured him into smoking the drug and since then everything around his physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being has drastically changed. With tears rolling down his cheek, Christian said his wife and children have now deserted him and wished him dead. Karim Turay aka Razor sells Kush in Waterloo. He told this medium that he went into the Kush business because he couldn't afford tuition fees so he ventured into the trade not knowing that it will have a dire effect later. He said he now wants to quit the trade but he is so addicted that he is unable. He raised his hands in the air and Prayed that God takes his mind off this disease. Two weeks ago, the Ministry Of Health and Sanitation buried 32 people who died as a result of kush smoking, and were buried in a mass grave in Freetown. These deaths sent fear in the minds of many addicts; however, the addictive part of the drug got them hooked up once again, which is a clear manifestation that the ingredients used are highly addictive and fatal. The addiction is so strong that if an addict does not have money to purchase a joint, he or she will do everything demeaning to raise 5 Leones, such as the collection of garbage, cleaning of gutters, laundering for people, fetching water and to an extent theft. The danger of the drug is twofold: the risk of self-injury to the drug taker and the highly addictive nature of the drug itself. Research conducted by the American Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), described Voodoo Kush as 'a synthetic version of tetrahydrocannabinol mixture of plant material sprayed with synthetic psychoactive chemicals similar to the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana/weed.' # Synergy Wellness: Building a Medical Cannabis Eco-System from the Ground Up Read Moving on Up! Cheeba’s Higher Certificate is Africa’s First Officially Recognized Cannabis Qualification Read Presidential Cannabis Advisor: ‘The Industry is in a Free-for-All and We Are Dealing With a Crisis of Illegality’ Read NEXT PREVIOUS Cannabiz Africa Newsline The Business Of Cannabis Coming Fresh every Week. Stay ahead in the cannabis industry! Subscribe to CANNABIZ AFRICA NEWSLINE for weekly insights on the business of cannabis. Fresh updates every week! Enter Your Email Join Thanks for subscribing!

The Czech Is In The Post: Prague To Consider Full Adult-Use Legalization This Year The Czech Republic hosted the European Union’s National Drug Co-ordinators Meeting earlier this month where the 27 member states considered the implications of the legalization wave that’s sweeping Europe Ben Stevens, BusinessCann 22/09/20, 12:00 [object Object] INTERNATIONAL BREAKING NEWS PREVIOUS NEXT Cannabiz Africa Newsline The Business Of Cannabis Coming Fresh every Week. Stay ahead in the cannabis industry! Subscribe to CANNABIZ AFRICA NEWSLINE for weekly insights on the business of cannabis. Fresh updates every week! Enter Your Email Join Thanks for subscribing!

CANNABIS INDUSTRY BREAKING NEWS Mexico's Cannabis Growers Are Going Rogue Farmers are cultivating and selling cannabis as Mexico’s government continues to bungle cannabis legalization. Nathanial Janowitz, Vice Magazine 6 August 2022 at 06:30:00 TETECALA, Mexico — Rosa Quiroga’s small family farm in the central Mexican state of Morelos no longer smells like tomatoes. While she and her family still grow some vegetables, the 78-year-old’s primary focus now is signaled by the aroma of her newest crops: marijuana strains, like Blue Dream, White Widow, and Gorilla Glue. “I never thought we’d be planting crops like the ones we have now,” Quiroga chuckled, standing a few feet from her burgeoning weed plants. She recalled how her mom always kept a couple cannabis plants for infusing into an alcohol that helped her with various health problems, “but she told us not to mention the plants.” “At that time, it was not very common to talk about cannabis,” she said. For generations, cannabis farmers in Mexico hid their plants from authorities, working in a clandestine market outlawed by the government . But as Mexican legalization continues to sit in a strange bureaucratic purgatory that few understand, many around the country have decided to take matters into their own hands. Now, Quiroga’s plants aren’t hidden. She informed both the local and federal governments about her plants in an open defiance of lawmakers who have repeatedly failed to pass a cannabis legalization law, even though they were mandated to do so by Mexico’s Supreme Court in 2018. In Tetecala, Quiroga wasn’t alone. Six other families she’d known since childhood joined her in 2021 to begin producing cannabis with the goal of creating medicinal oils and creams. They’re also interested in many other avenues outside of the medicinal sphere, especially edibles. The group are not traditional cannabis-growing families but rather local farmers, called campesinos in Spanish, who want the government to “provide us with this opportunity,” she said. “We’re asking that they make it legal to plant whatever we want on our land.” But not everyone in Tetecala was happy about the growing innovation and cultivation around cannabis. Mexico remains a relatively conservative country, where marijuana has long been stigmatized. Even members of her own family stopped talking to her, Quiroga said, “because they told me that [Tetecala] was going to be a drug-addict town, a marijuana town.” But her daughter has embraced the movement. “She has a lot of enthusiasm to do things, she’s learning how to make everything, particularly the gummies,” said Quiroga. The farmers, together with a cannabis advocacy group called the Morelense Cannabis Route, drafted and signed the Plan Tetecala on Nov. 28, 2021, declaring their intention to grow, cultivate, and sell cannabis in various forms, and formally presented it to the government. When they didn’t receive a response, they went ahead anyway, and began attempting to spread the plan around the country. Andres Saavedra, a lawyer and one of the founders of Plan Tetecala , called it “a historical social document” that aims to generate “an expectation of balanced and equitable means of production” and “the liberation of oppressed people in regards to cultivation.” “It is oppressive not to allow the people who are on the land to decide what they can or cannot cultivate,” Saavedra told VICE World News. Saavedra noted it wasn’t a coincidence that the Plan Tetecala was signed a day after the 110th anniversary of famed revolutionary Emiliano Zapata’s Plan Ayala in 1911—named after the Morelos town where Zapata was born—and is widely recognized as a fundamental land reform initiative that greatly influenced modern Mexico. The idea for the plan took hold as the Mexican government bungled legalization after the 2018 mandate from the Supreme Court. In the years following, the bill was repeatedly bounced between the congress and the senate, with each revision seemingly reducing and removing more and more of the articles that addressed equitable business opportunities for rural landowners and affirmative action for communities affected by years of cannabis prohibition. That’s exactly what many activists feared would happen, likely leading to the exclusion of small, humble farmers in favor of the agricultural industry. Saavedra and other activists observed the process closely as most of the participants in the conversation came from industry, science, and politics—a process from which they said they were mostly excluded. “It is absurd that they are talking about a land issue and that the last ones to participate are those who work the land and have the land,” he said. But even the watered-down version of the law failed to create consensus. Lawmakers missed various deadlines, first asking for an extension in December 2020, then just altogether ignoring a final deadline in April of last year. As a result, the Supreme Court essentially went over the elected officials’ heads in July 2021, and for only the second time in Mexican history dictated a general declaration of unconstitutionality and changed the country’s cannabis law. Basically, they deleted the words “medicinal” and “scientific” from a general health law that allowed people to apply for permits to grow, carry, and sell cannabis. Therefore, anyone can now apply for a permit for personal use, not just for medicinal and scientific use of cannabis. But while that opened the door for people to go through a bureaucratic process to legally cultivate certain amounts of cannabis, it's far from the federal legalization law that Mexico intended to pass, similar to countries like Canada and Uruguay—a bill that promises to create the biggest federal weed market in the world. Back in Tetecala, farmers began cultivating cannabis in various municipalities in Morelos a few months after the Supreme Court mandate, and have been expanding cannabis production into two other states. They also have signees of the plan in at least 20 of Mexico’s 32 states who are interested in beginning to cultivate soon. Through the entire process, they’ve kept authorities in the loop about what they’re doing, submitting 90 petitions to various levels of government around the country informing them of their activities. “What we tell the government is that we are already cultivating, we are already transforming, we are already distributing… We are informing them of how this is advancing,” said Saavedra. They’re not asking for permission, he insisted. But Saavedra pushed back on the idea that what they are doing is illegal. “Really, the word ‘illegal’—I would eradicate it and change it to ‘A-legal,’” he said. “Because if you say illegal, it means that you are breaking the law. Here it is A-legal, because there is no law. So we are in a vacuum, in a legal limbo.” While the Supreme Court mandate made it quasi-legal to get involved in certain aspects of cannabis through an application process to the minister of health, it also had the unintended effect of essentially freezing the general legalization law. With the Supreme Court off their backs, the law was pushed onto the back burner and was hardly mentioned during the most recent fall and spring legislative sessions. That confusion over legalities is one of the central tenants, where the signees of the Plan Tetecala receive legal help, which is “the real difference with the plan; that accessibility for community members, ejidatarios, indigenous people, women, vulnerable sectors [of society] is completely open and free. So, by having that vision of gratuity, you are creating balance and it is possible for anyone to participate in the industry,” said Saavedra. Although the Plan Tetecala is still in its infancy, its members organized the inaugural Entrepreneurial Cannabis Fair in the Morelos state capital of Cuernavaca on May 28. There were a series of lectures, a workshop that teaches how to make cannabis oils, and even a Cannabis business shark tank where entrepreneurs pitched their ideas to a group of leaders in the field and asked for support. The event’s participants were eclectic; hipsters chatted with elderly farmers in front of booths selling edibles, CBD, and a wide variety of cannabis products. The group is now planning similar events in other states around the country. Amanda Burgos arrived at the fair tired after traveling from northern Mexico. But she had a broad smile on her face the entire day. She, along with Rosa Quiroga, were the guests of honor, presenting their first batches of oils and creams, alongside smokable nuggets of marijuana. Burgos was one of the first to sign the Tetecala Plan in her hometown of Alamos in the border state of Sonora, where she and seven others are now openly producing cannabis. The Sonora faction of Plan Tetecala even planted several cannabis plants in front of the government palace in the state capital of Hermosillo in April as a symbolic protest in favor of legalization. She said that she was “proud” of her products on sale at the fair because they’re “from an organic plant, without any pesticides. I am sure of what I am promoting, because I know that I am selling the best-quality stuff.” She’s producing a product that can help her family survive. In Sonora, like Morelos, and almost every state in Mexico, there “is a lot of need.” “There are no jobs, people struggle to work,” said Burgos. “There are no good salaries, there aren't, so we have to help ourselves.” Plan Tetecala is one of many micro movements that are breaking out across Mexico. “The absence of regulation has meant that more communities are taking matters into their own hands,” said Zara Snapp, co-founder of the Mexican research and advocacy organization Instituto RIA. “Communities and people are saying, ‘We're going ahead, legal or not; we're just going to move forward.’” Snapp mentioned a recent decree by the local government in Oaxaca City in April that made it legal to consume marijuana anywhere in the municipality where tobacco smoking is allowed. She said that these kinds of steps by the city of Oaxaca and the growing Tetecala Plan movement are “paving a path. It's interesting because we are not seeing a lot of movement on the federal level. We're seeing a lot of discourse and a lot of rhetoric, but we're seeing very little action and collective political will.” While the micro movements are inspiring, Snapp still hopes that the general law that seemed so close to passing a couple years ago will still go ahead. “[Legalization in Mexico] has been a roller-coaster and I'm hoping we can get some sort of resolution eventually.” Synergy Wellness: Building a Medical Cannabis Eco-System from the Ground Up Read Moving on Up! Cheeba’s Higher Certificate is Africa’s First Officially Recognized Cannabis Qualification Read Presidential Cannabis Advisor: ‘The Industry is in a Free-for-All and We Are Dealing With a Crisis of Illegality’ Read NEXT PREVIOUS Cannabiz Africa Newsline The Business Of Cannabis Coming Fresh every Week. Stay ahead in the cannabis industry! Subscribe to CANNABIZ AFRICA NEWSLINE for weekly insights on the business of cannabis. Fresh updates every week! Enter Your Email Join Thanks for subscribing!

CANNABIS INDUSTRY BREAKING NEWS Wrong Arm of the Law! eSwatini Cop Bust Allegedly Selling Cannabis in Limpopo Mpumulanga SAPS say they’re strengthening measure to combat “dagga trafficking” from neighbouring countries, particularly the Kingdom of eSwatini. This after several arrests including that of an eSwatini police sergeant in Limpopo for allegedly dealing in cannabis. Cannabiz Africa/IOL News 21 May 2023 at 09:00:00 An eSwatini police sergeant and two other Swazi nationals have been arrested in Burgersfort, Limpopo on cannabis dealing charges. This follows a Mpumulanga police warning that they are increasing their vigilance on cross border cannabis smuggling from eSwatini. IOL reports that the 46 year-old sergeant was taken into custody at around 11 am on Thursday, 18 May 2023 after a stop and search operation on the R37 next to L50 Farm. Police spokesman Colonel Malesela Ledwaba says police were conducting a routine operation when they stopped a white Volkswagen Polo with Mpumulanga registration plates. Colonel Ledwaba said police searched the car “after detecting an unpleasant odour” and found cannabis to the value of R62 000. The three occupants of the car, all eSwatini nationals, were then arrested and it was then discovered that one of them was a serving policeman. READ: MPUMULANGA POLICE CAPTAIN BUST FOR ALLEGEDLY SELLING 22 KG OF CANNABIS OUT THE BACK OF HS POLICE VAN And in another recent arrest, a 31 year-old man was taken into custody on Monday, 15 May 2023 at Mahamba border post between South Africa and eSwatini after he allegedly tried to smuggle cannabis concealed in a sealed gas tank. Mpumulanga police spokesman Colonel Donald Mdhluli said “alert police officers intercepted the man, cut open the gas tank and found dagga with a street value of around R18 000”. Colonel Mdhluli said “Police in Mpumalanga have strengthened security measures when it comes to dagga trafficking from neighbouring countries, including the Kingdom of Eswatini.” He said security had been tightened on South Africa’s borderline where false vehicle compartments were uncovered recently. READ: MPUMULANGA WARDEN ARRESTED AFTER ALMOST 2 TONS OF CANNABIS FOUND AT STANDERTON PRISON. Synergy Wellness: Building a Medical Cannabis Eco-System from the Ground Up Read Moving on Up! Cheeba’s Higher Certificate is Africa’s First Officially Recognized Cannabis Qualification Read Presidential Cannabis Advisor: ‘The Industry is in a Free-for-All and We Are Dealing With a Crisis of Illegality’ Read NEXT PREVIOUS Cannabiz Africa Newsline The Business Of Cannabis Coming Fresh every Week. Stay ahead in the cannabis industry! Subscribe to CANNABIZ AFRICA NEWSLINE for weekly insights on the business of cannabis. Fresh updates every week! Enter Your Email Join Thanks for subscribing!

Previous Next Africa Urgently Needs to Develop Market Entry Strategies if it is to Play In the International Cannabis Game Home African News South African News International News All News Marketplace Business News More Prohibition Partners and the ACA Group 14 December 2022 at 06:00:00 The Global Cannabis Report 2022 says there’s been significant investment and growth in the African cannabis market, but unless governments put the right regulatory frameworks in place, they risk losing out on the economic benefits that other countries are enjoying. [object Object] Cannabiz Africa Newsline The Business Of Cannabis Coming Fresh every Week. Stay ahead in the cannabis industry! Subscribe to CANNABIZ AFRICA NEWSLINE for weekly insights on the business of cannabis. Fresh updates every week! Enter Your Email Join Thanks for subscribing! What Sets Us Apart ? Cannabiz Africa is the leading B2B news platform for the continent's cannabis industry, connecting you directly with key stakeholders. With over 4,000 unique monthly users and a growing audience of 1,500 engaged Newsline subscribers, we provide unmatched visibility for your brand. Advertise with us today to reach the heart of the industry! Click here, to advertise your brand, product and or service

CANNABIS INDUSTRY BREAKING NEWS Cry the Beloved Cannabis Country! Is Reform Being Bungled Because of Sheer Incompetence, Or is There Something More Sinister at Play? The South African Government has made a complete mess of cannabis legalization. With all the tools at its disposal to effect a regulatory environment that will benefit the country at large, it has failed spectacularly. As the year draws to a close, it’s become patently clear that all talk from the Union Buildings this year about enabling a cannabis economy has been vacuous. Eish! Is this a consequence of stupidity or criminality? Brett Hilton-Barber 10 November 2022 at 05:00:00 Horrible thought! Are Cannabis Policy-makers Either Stupid or Criminal? Cannabis reform in South Africa has failed spectacularly during 2022, either as a consequence of dysfunctionality or criminality. There have been no political impediments to President Cyril Ramaphosa fast-tracking cannabis reform as he promised in SONA in February 2022, which means there are two uncomfortable conclusions to be drawn: Either the Government is so completely incompetent or dysfuntional in that it cannot draft laws that reflects its own policy; or There is a more sinister agenda at play – that of the Gangster State. Consider this. The Government estimates that the illegal cannabis industry turns over R28 billion a year and we are among the biggest exporters of illegal cannabis in Africa. One doesn’t have to watch Netflix to know that this cannot happen without the collusion of certain elements of law enforcement. The logical conclusion for this train of thought is that there are individuals within the criminal justice system who stand to lose should there be outright cannabis legalization and it is in the interests of certain powerful people to impede the legalization of cannabis. Germany Makes Us Look Like Amateurs South Africa has had first mover advantage in the cannabis space since it started hemp trials way back in the late 1990’s. Since then it has squandered every opportunity to transform the potential of the plant into economic benefit for the good of South Africans. The bumbling ANC government’s good intentions around unlocking the potential of cannabis stand in embarrassing stark contrast to Germany, where the new coalition government has put in place clear time frames and guidelines for full adult-use legalization, been pro-active in engaging with stakeholders and has made it easy for medical cannabis patients to sign up for treatment. And it’s going to do it’s best to be self-sufficient in all its cannabis requirements. Germany is adopting a wholistic approach to the plant, unlike South Africa, where cannabis reform could best be described as a bad dog’s breakfast, bereft of imagination or ideological direction and laden with hypocricy. Depressing Dip Stick Into The State of Cannabis Affairs While Germany is forging ahead, this is the depressing status of the South African cannabis industry right now: The Drugs and Drug Trafficking Ammendment Act of 2022 is due to come into force in the next few weeks, and it still continues to criminalize cannabis, with the Department of Justice ignoring any input from Presidential cannabis advisor Garth Strachan; The Drugs Bill was approved by the Justice and Correctional Services Committee which ignored every bit of public input on the Bill. The reason being that if the Bill does not become law by 17 December 2022, all convictions under the previous Drugs Trafficking Act will become open to challenge; The Drugs Act in its new incarnation remains fundamentally flawed, with the Constitutional Court giving Parliament two years to amend the Act to remove the sections that discriminate against children guilty of cannabis offences; SAHPRA has also made no input into the new Drugs Trafficking Act as to which substances it suggests should be included – the proposed Act also legislates that every new illicit substance to be included in the Act’s schedules needs to be approved by an Act of Parliament rather than a designated expert. This puts MP’s in the unenviable position of having to pass laws concerning a subject to which they admit they have scant knowledge; Provinces are powerless to push ahead with their own cannabis plans until such time as National Government creates the right regulatory framework; The Deputy Justice Minister John Jeffery has complained that state legal advisors appear to be beholden unto themselves as the cannabis laws they’ve drafted do not reflect state policy; The Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill is floundering around in the Parliamentary system and if passed into law is certain to be challenged in court – it does not allow the Private Grow Club Model, despite the fact that it is completely in line with the Constitution. At best, the Bill allows for future legislation for the commercial trade in cannabis and related products, but is the narrowest interpretation of the landmark 2018 Constitutional Court ruling that the private consumption of cannabis is legal; The chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Justice and Correctional Services, Bulelani Mangwashe says he’s concerned about the disconnect between Parliament and the Executive and that MP’s are being set up to fail in passing cannabis-related legislation; he’s also concerned that cannabis legislation appears to be driven by obligations to obey court orders instead of being generated by Parliament; The legality of the Private Grow Club Model is heading for the Supreme Court of Appeal as Western Cape Hgh Court Judge Hayley Slingers has admitted that another court may come to a different conclusion to her rejection of the application by The Haze Club to recognize the legality of such clubs; she depended on the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act to make her ruling that PCC’s were effectively drug dealers in terms of the Act; The Ministers of Police, Justice and Correctional Services and the Director of National Prosecutions all opposed THC’s application for leave to appeal against the Western Cape High Court ruling, which means they are to this day opposing any cannabis reform; The Private Sector Working Group has done the Government's work in drawing up a comprehensive over-arching cannabis law (The Webber Wentzel document) but this initiative has collapsed as Government has not engaged seriously with private cannabis stakeholders; The Plant Improvement Act has defined hemp as having a THC content of less than 0,2%, despite every stakeholder saying this is unrealistic for South African climate which causes THC spikes in cannabis – the rest of the world is trending towards a 1% THC limit in defining hemp; There is no mechanism for registering local cannabis landraces if they have a more than 0,2% THC; Hemp permits are restricted to 50 ha a permit-holder which rules out the economies of scale in developing a domestic hemp industry that can serve the construction, animal feed and textile industries; Only five of South Africa’s 90 or so SAHPRA-license holders are legally exporting, which means that 90% of the industry may be in trouble; SAHPRA license holders are dumping product that they cannot export into the domestic illegal markets – this is a landmine waiting to explode in that it could result in criminal prosecution, license withdrawal and financial catastrophe for those implicated and it will have wider ramifications on the industry; The dumping of export-quality, high THC cannabis by certain SAHPRA license holders has led to a stockpile of cannabis in Mpondoland, where traditional growers are still being persecuted by police and there are allegations of SAPS involvement in cannabis smuggling, particularly in the Lusikisiki area; The Mpondoland stockpile means that legacy farmers aren’t earning and that is having a direct economic impact on the lives of poor people in hundreds of villages in the Eastern Cape; The Section 21 medical cannabis patient system is not sustainable and is suspected of being abused by certain organizations as a way of distributing recreational cannabis; The specified THC limits on CBD products affect their efficacy and are already backfiring on an industry that is beset with product mislabelling; The Government has re-appointed Anban Pillay to Head of Compliance in the Department of Health, despite the fact that he is still to face criminal charges relating to the Digital Vibes scandal in which the Minister of Health was implicated in benefitting from an illegally awarded tender; Pillay is ultimately SAHPRA’s go-to-man at the Department and the fact that he is implicated in corruption, casts an unnecessary pall over the cannabis industry licensing regime. # Synergy Wellness: Building a Medical Cannabis Eco-System from the Ground Up Read Moving on Up! Cheeba’s Higher Certificate is Africa’s First Officially Recognized Cannabis Qualification Read Presidential Cannabis Advisor: ‘The Industry is in a Free-for-All and We Are Dealing With a Crisis of Illegality’ Read NEXT PREVIOUS Cannabiz Africa Newsline The Business Of Cannabis Coming Fresh every Week. Stay ahead in the cannabis industry! Subscribe to CANNABIZ AFRICA NEWSLINE for weekly insights on the business of cannabis. Fresh updates every week! Enter Your Email Join Thanks for subscribing!

CANNABIS INDUSTRY BREAKING NEWS Malawi Shares Zimbabwe’s Anxiety Over Declining Tobacco Revenue, Looking at Hemp as an Alternative Malawi seeks to develop the hemp industry to make up for declining earnings from the tobacco sector. However, authorities have been criticized for the high cost of license fees. At US$!0 000 this is way out of reach for most small-scale tobacco farmers. Prohibition Partners/ACA Group 26 December 2022 at 11:00:00 Malawi has taken meaningful steps to establish its cannabis industry. Cannabis and industrial hemp cultivation and processing were legalised in 2020, and have been earmarked as a priority sector, serving as a substitute for declining tobacco exports. Malawi receives 70% of its foreign currency earnings from tobacco, which contributes 13% of gross domestic product (GDP). With agriculture employing over 80% of Malawians, the development of the hemp industry is a top priority for the government. Similar to South Africa, Malawi’s President also made special mention of cannabis and hemp in his 2021 State of The Nation address, emphasising the potential of the plant to replace declining tobacco exports. The Chairperson of Malawi’s newly established Cannabis Regulatory Authority, Boniface Kadzamira, has stated that 72 licences have been issued for cannabis activities since legalisation. Licence fees have been criticised by local farmers for being too expensive, costing up to US$10,000, a significant sum for one of the world’s poorest countries. Malawi has also taken proactive measures to boost its competitiveness in the sector. In 2021, Malawi entered into a training agreement with the United States Cannabis Association, a plan designed to upskill locals in cannabis and hemp cultivation, operations, compliance and distribution. The United States Cannabis Association has also committed to assisting Malawi identify suitable international buyers. In 2021, the government approached Mike Tyson to be the national ambassador for Malawi’s cannabis industry; a move criticised by some locals due to Tyson’s previous convictions. Invegrow is Malawi’s leading cannabis company, having received authorisation from the Malawian government to research hemp since 2013. The company has played a pivotal role in educating the government on the potential of cannabis as a cash crop, and has provided guidance on regulations, strain suitability and global competitiveness. With Malawian high THC strains, such as Malawi Gold already world famous, the country has significant potential to develop competitive cannabis and industrial hemp sectors with the right investments, policy framework and skills development. # Synergy Wellness: Building a Medical Cannabis Eco-System from the Ground Up Read Moving on Up! Cheeba’s Higher Certificate is Africa’s First Officially Recognized Cannabis Qualification Read Presidential Cannabis Advisor: ‘The Industry is in a Free-for-All and We Are Dealing With a Crisis of Illegality’ Read NEXT PREVIOUS Cannabiz Africa Newsline The Business Of Cannabis Coming Fresh every Week. Stay ahead in the cannabis industry! Subscribe to CANNABIZ AFRICA NEWSLINE for weekly insights on the business of cannabis. Fresh updates every week! Enter Your Email Join Thanks for subscribing!