It is currently being prepared to become the final law on the stuff in Mzansi.
A newly drafted law will allow people to use Zol in their homes but when in public you will only be allowed to carry up to 100mg.
The draft bill is published by justice minister Ronald Lamola.
The bill is in line with the Constitutional Court’s 2018 judgement that declared that some parts of the law covering the use of Zol in the country were not constitutional.
The ConCourt gave Parliament until September 2020 to work towards changing this law and making sure that it doesn’t contradict the South African constitution.
Lamola’s new draft covers the use of the herb for both medicinal and personal use.
The law will not allow people to buy or sell the herb and even use it outside their homes – and says if you want to possess it outside your home the measurements should not exceed 100mg. It also allows you to cultivate it.
The bill defines a ‘private place’ as any place belonging to a person – like a building, a house, a room, a tent, a mobile home, a caravan, boat or land or any portion that is meant for a person’s use and to which the public doesn’t have right of access.
A public park won’t be used as a cultivation space…
On 19 September 2018, Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo of the Constitutional Court upheld a ruling by the Western Cape high court that it was legal for South Africans to have Zol for personal use.
Then justice minister Michael Masutha had gone to the Constitutional Court to appeal the Western Cape high court ruling.
But Justice Zondo dismissed Masutha’s application and said that certain sections of the law covering the use of Zol in the country were not constitutional.
Zondo said the ruling meant that “no adult will be arrested for being in possession of dagga for personal use in South Africa”.
“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 Zondo in his ruling.
ALSO SEE: Zondo feels Zol should be legal
But the new draft will allow officers to arrest anyone cultivating or found in possession of Zol exceeding the amount allowed by the new law.
The law won’t allow people to smoke Zol in public, in front of children and in a car on a public road and prescribes sentences for offenders – and could face between 2 to 15 years in jail.
(edited by MLM)
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