Last year, South African courts ruled that the personal and private use of cannabis is protected by the country’s constitution.

In other words, you might light up in your own home without worrying about the police busting down your door, although there is still a great deal of legal grey area that needs to be clarified.

How much is deemed personal use is a pressing concern, and South Africans are still getting arrested for buying and growing cannabis.

Or tomatoes, as this guy calls it.

The case has long been made for South Africa to join other countries that have completely decriminalised cannabis, and BusinessTech has put forward a strong one:

A new in-depth research report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy [GCDP] suggests that global drug control policies and scheduling by the UN is completely broken – and some drastic changes need to be made to bring it in line with modern science.

In its report, the commission – which is made up of former heads of state and intellectuals across the political, cultural and economic spheres – has pointed to several glaring issues with the way narcotics are scheduled.

Most notably, the scheduling of psychoactive substances appears to be completely arbitrary, based on historical biases and political considerations, without taking into account any scientific evidence or analysing a rational scale of harms and benefits.

That’s why the recent legal changes around CBD oil were so welcome, but there is still a long way to go.

Every smoker has had the ‘cannabis versus alcohol’ argument, and if you look at the harm caused by the latter, there is only ever one winner.

Click on the image below and it will show a full-size image:

Some countries have taken a very different approach to their drug problems.

Portugal has been testing a radical policy of decriminalising the use and possession of all drugs for the past 18 years, and it has seen a marked reduction in addiction, overdoses, HIV infection and drug-related crime.

For more on that story, you can watch Carte Blanche’s story from May of this year.

It’s a slow process, but South Africa is making ground:

The findings of the GCDP’s research is particularly important in light of recent court rulings and social changes around cannabis in the country.

According to the commission, some of the earliest drugs scheduled in terms of the UN’s 1961 convention – including widely-used substances such as cannabis, cannabis resin, heroin and cocaine – have never received expert evaluation, or their evaluations are decades out of date.

Many countries, including South Africa, are waking up to the benefits of de-scheduling or decriminalising…

South African courts have ruled that private use of cannabis is protected by the country’s constitution – and local governments in Cape Town and the Eastern Cape are preparing to launch full-blown cannabis farming projects.

While the drug has not been completely decriminalised – and the state’s official position and policies surrounding cannabis laws and regulations are yet to be tabled – the moves made so far have been largely welcomed, and are in line with international trends.

Perhaps it’s the circles I find myself in, but there’s an almost unanimous consensus that we would benefit, as a society, from a serious rethink with regards our drug policy.

The evidence that we’ve really stuffed up the wholly unnecessary attack on cannabis is now overwhelming, as backed up by that GCDP report:

The commission is unanimous in its view that the current legal classification appears obsolete and idiosyncratic and can no longer be supported as a justification for law-making and should be rejected, as it undermines the legitimacy of the law itself.

It said there is strong evidence that comprehensive tobacco control programs are effective in reducing tobacco use among adults and young people, and would have a similar impact on the use of cannabis.

By contrast, there is a notable “lack of evidence of any effectiveness of criminalisation approaches towards cannabis,” the commission said.

Too long didn’t read? There are no plus sides to cannabis being criminalised, and many plus sides to its decriminalisation.

Here’s hoping that in the years to come, progression on this front continues to be made.

It certainly is long overdue.

[source:businesstech]