Cannabis industry only has itself to blame for edibles being banned

In the six-year lacuna between that Constitutional Court ruling legalising private use of dagga and the eventual Act that came to regulate it, the cannabis industry was in a free-for-all. There’s probably some shop down the road from your neighbourhood grocer which claims to only sell “hemp and CBD products”, but you know better.

If you went in there and asked for a joint, you’d be offered a greater variety than Rolls Royce’s colour options. Ever had a one of those brownies? For the uninitiated, they can knock you out for the rest of the day. And yet, there they are, more freely available and unenforced than liquor, prescription medicine and probably even petrol.

Spare a thought for the pub owner who is spending so much money on compliance — while losing business to the kids who would rather get high in the shop selling cannabis with no issues — despite a lot of what they do being pretty illegal.

Government bans cannabis edibles

So, it shouldn’t be shocking that Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi finally took a break from his NHI bundu-bashing to do something effective to address health in the country. With the introduction of the Regulations Relating to the Prohibition of the Sale, Importation and Manufacture of Foodstuffs containing any part of the plant or compound derived from the genus Cannabis sativa L Hemp, hemp seed oil or hemp seed flour (and that’s the short title), we finally have some pushback against this free-for-all.

Perhaps it’s overreach, but what can you expect when the industry has allowed itself to act so recklessly and abuse the lack of regulation and enforcement? It’s commonplace to catch that distinct smell in the car in front of you at the robots, so I can’t imagine how many people will be on certain foodstuffs while driving, engaging in work or other important business.

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To date, we’ve hardly heard a murmur from the industry to promote responsible use. We’ve hardly heard of an attempt at self-regulation. We’ve not seen so much as an attempt at an industry body to deal with responsible use and sale.

What we have seen is this argument of “it’s legal now” or, for those who spent six months at law school and learned a new word, “it’s decriminalised”. No indication of what that means, what the limits are. No intention of determining what is best for the community. What we mostly saw was the question of how do I make money off of this and get away with as much as possible?

Cannabis regulation

There’s no question that we naturally expect the state to step in with regulation, but if an industry really cared about its community, it would do some introspection too. The cannabis community has spent decades fighting the state and perhaps it forgot to tell its industry to shift gear when the wins were coming, and they continued going all out.

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I’d love to know what the industry would have wanted from a regulatory point of view, but that information isn’t forthcoming beyond give us laws that legalise weed.

When the industry experts aren’t doing much to promote responsible use, leave it to the state in all its ignorance to care for society, and demand flat-out legalisation, they cannot then be shocked to see the state just shut everything down. Did they expect things to carry on as usual?

Who wins then? Who wins when you have an industry acting with impunity in the context of every other substance industry being heavily regulated to care for society?

If the cannabis industry is going to be angry with the new regulations, they should start by being angry with themselves for riding the canna train until the lines run out with no forethought of expanding the track.