It was 4:20 all day yesterday as South Africans celebrated Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo’s (below) ruling that it will no longer be a criminal offence for an adult person to be in possession of, grow, or use dagga in private.

Good news for anyone who is out of creative ways to hide that bankie from conservative friends and relatives.

Before you break out the bong, though, there’s some stuff you need to know.

There are still several technical issues to weed out, though, such as the amount of dagga a person can legally have in their possession.

“The judgment does not specify how many grams of cannabis can a person use or have in private,” Zondo said.

Easy on the puns there, News24. But yes, the details still need to be ironed out.

Phephelaphi Dube, director at the Centre for Constitutional Rights, told News24 that she viewed the judgment as “cautiously progressive”.

“It balances, on the one hand, the right to privacy and associated entitlements such as dignity and wellbeing against the need to maintain a lawful and orderly society.

“With due deference to the separation of powers, it will be up to Parliament to determine the lawful quantities that individuals may cultivate and consume.”

According to Dube, the judgment allows individuals to cultivate, to grow and consume cannabis “in certain narrowly defined spaces”, such as their homes.

If you’d like to see the full judgement, you can do so here. Just don’t get high beforehand or the legal jargon is going to do your head in.

To summarise some of the finer points, you can only smoke in a private dwelling. You can’t cultivate a weed plantation in your backyard, or sell or buy dagga on the street.

“From a reasonable viewpoint, a huge amount of dagga in one person’s possession can be seen as dealing in drugs, which is a criminal offence.”

In his judgment, Zondo said that a police officer would have to consider all the circumstances, including the quantity of cannabis found in an adult person’s possession.

If the police officer, on reasonable grounds, suspects that the person concerned is in possession of that cannabis for dealing and not for personal consumption, the officer may arrest the person, News24 reported earlier.For the cultivation of cannabis, he says the exact same rules should apply.

Zondo said that this reading-in will apply until such time as Parliament fixes the Constitutional defect in the case. If it does not do so, this will “continue to be part of the legislation”.

Parliament has 24 months to change the relevant sections of the Medicines Controls Act to bring it in line with the ruling. Until then adults can safely smoke weed in private.

That said, what constitutes a private dwelling is also under consideration. Technically, your car is private property, but one of the questions being posed by the new ruling is whether or not it’s safe to smoke and drive.

Times LIVE reports

Laws and limits exist for driving under the influence of alcohol but‚ as tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – the principal psychoactive constituent of marijuana – remains in a user’s system for much longer than alcohol does‚ it makes it difficult to establish limits and laws around marijuana use.

Rhys Evans‚ director at ALCO-Safe‚ which supplies drug and alcohol testing equipment‚ said in a statement on Tuesday that regulations‚ limits and testing requirements would be needed.

Section 65 of the National Road Traffic Act states that‚ “No person may drive a vehicle or occupy the driver’s seat of a motor vehicle of which the engine is running on a public road while under the influence of intoxicating liquor or drug having narcotic effect”.

So it’s best to keep the smoking in-house, so to speak. Technically, anyone caught with even trace amounts of THC in their system while driving could be arrested. Although, until proper testing procedures are in place, it will be incredibly difficult to determine whether or not someone is high.

For more info from the man who made this possible, here’s lawyer Garreth Prince to “weed out the finer details” on SABC News.

We’re going to need to be high to deal with these puns.

[source:news24&timeslive]