Good and bad news for stoners

In 2018, the Constitutional Court legalised the private use of cannabis and gave parliament two years to come up with legislation. Of course they left it to the last minute. It’s the principle of African time. I operate on it myself.

As it turns out, the draft Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill probably isn’t quite what the enlightened court had in mind. Like most people who grew up in Durban, coming into contact with marijuana was unavoidable. Especially if you studied journalism. I hesitate to use the word “dagga” because it’s triggering and I can’t risk the flashbacks. Not when I live alone and there’s nobody around to cradle my head and murmur softly while dribbling tequila into my mess of a mouth.

Back in the eighties, there was no shortage of Durban Poison. There was also no shortage of Durban drug squaddies and salivating sniffer dogs.

My first score was a 50c karchie from a waiter in Umhlanga. He palmed it, thinking he’d slip it to me while shaking my hand. I wasn’t in on this and got a big skrik when I felt something in his hand. I reacted badly, sending the zol skittering across the restaurant floor. He wasn’t impressed.

When I did have a joint with friends, it hardly ever inspired us to move on to heroin, or become Satanists, or go out robbing and killing innocent people. Mostly we played music, talked too much when we weren’t speechless, got the munchies and laughed. Lots of laughing.

There was a time when an admission of this nature would have got me fired or had the cops bursting through my door. I can’t be absolutely sure that one of these things won’t still happen.

The first time I got bust was in a roadblock outside Villiers at the start of a long weekend. I was with my very first girlfriend and a couple of buddies, heading to Joburg for three days of peace, love and music. It was around midnight when we hit a roadblock shortly after hitting a joint. They found my stash in her handbag.

Setting off from Durban, I told her to relax. The cops will never search your bag. I thought they might give us a break, what with us being white and all. No such luck. The cops hated us because we were young and beautiful and lived in Durban and they were ugly and stupid and lived in Villers. They would have locked us up even if they hadn’t found any weed.

Long story short – three nights behind bars interrupted only by the humiliation of me being taken, in handcuffs, to the town’s pharmacy where my roll of 20 pencils was weighed on the chemist’s scale in front of all the tannies doing their Saturday morning shopping. It came in at 4.3 grams.

A couple of months later, my father drove me back for the hearing and offered to be a character witness. Given his attitude all the way from Durban, I fully expected him to ask the magistrate to give me life. Instead, I got six months suspended for three years. In those days there was no option of a fine.

The second bust came a few weeks down the line. Acting on a noise complaint, police barged into our band practice room in a dodgy part of the city late one night. I was the drummer and my leg was in plaster after an unusual incident involving … anyway, they spotted a groupie with a pile of Durban’s finest in his lap. We were marched off to the van, me hobbling on crutches with a shotgun poking me in the back. Under a certain amount of duress, the guy with the stash agreed to take the rap.

Just before we were taken up to court in the morning, my father pitched up at the cells with a clean, ironed shirt for me. That was an unexpected surprise. He seemed less angry this time around. Perhaps he’d reached the final stage of grief.

There was another time we were arrested outside Smuggler’s Inn down the bad end of Point Road (there has never been a good end), but that ended amicably with the bass player getting a warning for having a still-smoking pipe in his pocket and the rest of us being fined for swearing at the police. Things were different back then. You could go to jail for having a couple of pips in your pocket.

You know what you can have now? Unlimited seeds, several plants and 600 grams of dried weed if you live alone. If you live with someone, you can possess 1.2 kilograms. I’ve never even seen a kilo of pot. It sounds like something out of Breaking Bad. You’d probably need to make quite a bit of room in your sock drawer. You’re even allowed to take up to 100 grams with you when you go to work or wherever. You’re just not allowed to set fire to it. So, for stoners, that’s the good news.

The bad news is that the government still can’t bring itself to legalise the commodification of a plant that could turn our rural farmers into millionaires and our poorest provinces into glittering jewels. It’s estimated that by 2024, marijuana businesses in America will be pumping $130 billion a year into the US economy. There aren’t even enough numbers to convert that into rands.

When it comes to cannabis, the ANC is resolutely locked into the same blinkered mindset that prevailed during apartheid. The spirit of Louis le Grange, Kobie Coetsee and Adriaan Vlok is alive and well as far as the demon weed is concerned. Their contemporary, Bheki Cele, even wears the same kind of hat. And the desire to punish is as strong as ever.

If you possess more than the limit, or smoke a joint in your own house near a window, you will be committing an offence. If you light up in the presence of a child or a “non-consenting adult”, you will be charged. You can’t have a doobie on the beach, in a park or on the top of a mountain. And forget about making a hotbox in your car. That’ll get you four years, right there.

I don’t know what the story is with the window. Maybe they think someone walking by could catch a whiff of tetrahydrocannabinol and go mad and vote for the Democratic Alliance. We’re the only nanny state where the nanny wears steelcapped boots and carries a gun.

An estimated 15 million people smoke dope in South Africa. This is loosely based on research conducted through my kitchen window on Saturday afternoons. The dealers are going to be very happy.

Government regulation of the industry would have put them out of business. They’re going to sell so much weed now, man. And they still don’t have to pay tax. You’d think the politicians might have learnt from the alcohol and tobacco bans. Massive loss of revenue for the state.

The other good news, for me and about a billion black South Africans, is that the new Bill provides for criminal records for possession to be expunged. I’m almost a free man! I want to celebrate but it’s going to take a while to legally grow my own plant. The mood will probably have passed by the time harvesting season comes around.

Perhaps I’ll just drink heavily, get naked and howl at the moon.

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