Business
South African Police Won’t Arrest You for Growing Weed in Your House (Or Your Car)
Some updates to the language of South African cannabis laws have made it much less risky for cultivators and consumers to grow and use cannabis in private after several years of confusion surrounding decriminalization.
The South African Police Service has confirmed that they will no longer be bothering to arrest anybody for personal-use cultivation or possession of cannabis.
“In short, possession, use and cultivation of cannabis by an adult, for personal consumption, in private, is permitted. In contrast, dealing in cannabis is not permitted, therefore commercialization of cannabis is still not legal in South Africa,” Brigadier Athlende Mathe told IOL on Wednesday (a brigadier is an officer in the British army above colonel and below major general).
According to the IOL report, cannabis has been decriminalized in South Africa for several years but a new SAPS police directive has cleared up a bit of confusion that began in 2018 when the South African Constitutional Court declared a law banning cannabis use in private as unconstitutional.
“I am of the view that the prohibition of the performance of any activity in connection with the cultivation of cannabis by an adult in private for his or her personal consumption in private is inconsistent with the right to privacy entrenched in the Constitution and is constitutionally invalid,” said Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo in his 2018 ruling.
This ruling essentially made private use of cannabis legal in the country but police still technically had the power to arrest people for it because the regulations didn’t contain enough detail surrounding what specifically constituted legal vs illegal activity.
The new police directive would allow South African cannabis consumers to grow and consume their own cannabis provided they do it in a private space. What constitutes a private space is, as with all laws, somewhat up to interpretation.
“No arrests are to be made for personal and private cultivation and/or possession of cannabis, which activities are not criminal,” Brigadier Mathe said. “Furthermore, no arrests of alleged cannabis offenders should be effected merely for the reason to achieve predetermined targets and without assurance that there is indeed a crime that will be enrolled and prosecuted by the National Prosecuting Authority,” Mathe said, referring to police quotas maintaining officers make a certain amount of arrests each month for certain types of crimes.
According to the IOL report, a private space basically just means four walls and a roof, or anything that prevents others from accessing it. This could be a house, a shed, a car, a 4×4 Vivosun grow tent placed haphazardly outside with the roof cut off. It’s a little bit arbitrary and the cultivator does not need to technically own the space to be permitted to cultivate there. As long as you’re not selling the cannabis itself to anybody, SAPS said they will not arrest you.
These changes can be credited to updates in Section 1 of the Drugs and Trafficking Act, No. 140 of 1992, which expanded the definition of the phrase “deal in” to include a more rigid definition which IOL listed as follows:
“Under the newly defined Act, the phrase “deal in” involves any act in connection with the trans-shipment, importation, cultivation other than the cultivation of cannabis by an adult in a private place for his or her personal consumption in private, collection, manufacture, supply, prescription, administration, sale, transmission or exportation of the drug.”
As many Americans living in legal states can attest to, South Africa cannabis consumers still have a long confusing path to walk before they can truly breathe easy but this still marks a sizable step forward for cannabis legalization. South Africa is one of only six countries on the African continent where cannabis isn’t fully illegal. They are also the only African country to have decriminalized cannabis for recreational use. According to the IOL report, cannabis distributed by religions, tradition or cultural healers in small quantities is also regarded as private and personal, topping off a long list of gaping legal loopholes that will make for some very interesting years to come in South Africa.
Maybe I’ll take a trip one of these days on the off chance I find somebody growing some serious heat in a minivan somewhere, but my buddy once told me they have lions just casually walking around over there so maybe not.
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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