South Africa Introduces Some of the Most Lax Laws on Cannabis Yet

After years of banning cannabis in all forms, South Africa is quickly jumping through hoops to become one of the more lenient countries when it comes to using cannabis, and a likely massive competitor in the world hemp growing market.

In South Africa, the term to use isn’t pot, weed, MaryJane, reefer, or skunk. The main term to signify cannabis in South Africa is ‘Dagga’, a term that goes back to the 1600’s, and comes from the word ‘dacha’ from the Khoekhoe language (spoken by an indigenous, nomadic population from southwestern Africa of the same name).

It was actually meant to describe a different species called Leonotis which looks similar to cannabis in some ways, and can refer to either plant. In South African culture today, of course, it means cannabis.

Where South Africa stands on cannabis
South Africa is another one of those countries with some interesting cannabis laws, and a currently in flux situation where the kinks have not all been worked out to link new cannabis laws to the Bill of Rights of the country leaving some gray areas as to current legalities.

Much like most countries in the world, South Africa had major cannabis eradication programs in the 20th century with laws only relaxing in more recent years. In fact, in September of 2018, South Africa’s Constitutional Court made a ruling to decriminalize cannabis use by adults who use it, grow it, or simply possess it in private, and for their own personal use.

How bad did it get prior to this?
Heavy regulation was first put on Cannabis in South Africa in 1922 by the Customs and Excise Duty Act which grouped it with ‘habit forming drugs’, and illegalized growing, selling, using, and possessing cannabis. In 1925 it was added to the Dangerous Drugs list along with opium and cocaine.

It was then outlawed internationally. If that wasn’t enough, it was completely criminalized in 1928 with the Medical, Dental, and Pharmacy Act which came about from different political and moral reasons. Things stayed about the same until the 2018 decision.

What precipitated this change?
This actually came about from a court ruling on March 31st, 2017 when a presiding judge ruled that it was unconstitutional to not allow the use and cultivation privately of cannabis. This was done on the grounds that an infringement into personal privacy in this manner was not justifiable.

The case that preempted this to happen was originally brought by Gareth Prince, who himself approached the Constitutional Court with the argument that if Rastafarians are restricted from using and having cannabis, it unjustifiably limits their freedom as a religious group, a right that is guaranteed to all religions under the Bill of Rights, section 15. This was in 2002 and the court ruled against Prince 5-4.

When the ruling was made in 2017, it no longer stipulated a breach in religious freedoms, as the previous case had argued (and failed at). It instead went after the idea of the right to privacy, making privacy the central issue. The right to privacy is guaranteed to South Africans under the Bill of Rights section 14, and states the individual’s rights to lead a private life that is not interfered with by private or government institutions. It was explained by the court this way:

“A very high level of protection is given to the individual’s intimate personal sphere of life and the maintenance of its basic preconditions and there is a final untouchable sphere of human freedom that is beyond interference from any public authority. So much so that, in regard to this most intimate core of privacy, no justifiable limitation thereof can take place… This inviolable core is left behind once an individual enters into relationships with persons outside this closest intimate sphere; the individual’s activities then acquire a social dimension and the right of privacy in this context becomes subject to limitation.”

The 2017 ruling could not, however, be put into effect, and needed a confirmation from the Constitutional Court after appeals rolled in from the state.

The confirmation
The September 2018 ruling finally confirmed it, thus lifting the ban on cannabis that had existed since 1922, with the following guidelines:

Adults may use and possess cannabis in private for their own personal use.
It is NOT permitted to smoke cannabis in public, around children, or around non-consenting adults.
It is NOT permitted to use or possess cannabis in private that is NOT for personal use only.
It is no longer a criminal offense for an adult to grow cannabis in private for their own private use of it.
This didn’t exactly end the story though, as it still left many things to question, like, how much cannabis can a person have for personal use? As recently as February 14th of this year, a new bill has been drafted by the Ministry of Justice which goes over growing and possession laws more specifically.

According to this drafting, an adult South African can possess as much as 600 grams of dried cannabis in their homes – however they cannot sell any of this for either recreational or medicinal use. The government has until September of this year to get the new cannabis laws fully aligned with the constitution of the country.

What about hemp and hemp products?

The government is also working on regulating the commercial hemp market, with the goal of providing better opportunities for smaller farmers. President Ramaphosa stated in a State of the Nation address that new policy would be coming concerning medicinal cannabis in order to catch up to already existing global trends. He spoke about agriculture being an industry with great growth potential.

It should be understood that since bans were put on cannabis in the early 1900’s, hemp cultivation in South Africa had been technically illegal as it fell under the Cannabis species, which was banned until 2018. The 2018 ruling making it decriminalized for adults to cultivate their own cannabis invalidated the ban on hemp growing, leaving another gap to be filled by new regulatory laws as they are made.

Growing cannabis in South Africa
South Africa is known for having a great cannabis growing climate, and cannabis was considered a ‘traditional crop’ in 2011 by the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, as well as being an important cash crop for farmers in the country. While much was done to ruin these businesses in previous years, the new outlook on cannabis and hemp farming is opening the doors for new regulations to actually help these smaller farms who have been hurt in the past by South Africa’s attempt to eradicate cannabis.

This says good things about the future for South Africa, not just for struggling hemp farmers, but for the country’s economic growth as well. According to Prohibition Partners, the cannabis market in South Africa could be worth as much as 27 billion Rands by 2023 (approximately 1.6 billion USD). South Africa also has beneficial qualities like cheap labor and land markets which attract investors, although Prohibition Partners warns of the issues that could arise for South Africa in a new cannabis market without good infrastructure in place for things like irrigation.

And what about CBD?
CBD – or cannabidiol – one of the more popular cannabinoids from the cannabis plant, and one which has no psychoactive properties, but plenty of health benefits, is already legal in South Africa. It can be found already in all kinds of products, and is NOT a part of Prohibition Partner’s estimation for the cannabis market in South Africa, meaning that with the inclusion of CBD products, the cannabis market in South Africa will likely be worth even more!

CBD was made legal in May of 2019 by the South African Department of Health. This new change is actually meant to be temporary, but can be renewed in May of this year. With how things are going, a renewal seems pretty likely, and possibly something more permanent.

Courtesy CBDtesters

Making Biofuels Cheaper by Putting Plants to Work

Berkeley Lab researchers describe how biofuels can achieve cost parity with petroleum fuels

Biofuels are an important part of the broader strategy to replace petroleum-based gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels that we use today. However, biofuels have so far not reached cost parity with conventional petroleum fuels.

One strategy to make biofuels more competitive is to make plants do some of the work themselves. Scientists can engineer plants to produce valuable chemical compounds, or bioproducts, as they grow. Then the bioproducts can be extracted from the plant and the remaining plant material can be converted into fuel. When produced in the plant itself, bioproducts can help reduce the cost of the resulting biofuel.

But one important part of this strategy has remained unclear — exactly how much of a particular bioproduct would plants need to make in order to make the process economically feasible?

Now researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), which is managed by Berkeley Lab, have provided the first definition of this amount. Their study, jointly led by Corinne Scown and Patrick Shih, was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers first gathered information on a group of well-studied bioproducts that plants can already effectively produce — ranging from flavors and fragrances to biodegradable plastic. Making a valuable bioproduct would help offset the cost of making biofuels and make the whole process cheaper.

“It’s a really elegant solution, to be able to engineer a plant to directly accumulate a valuable bioproduct,” said Scown, a researcher in JBEI and Berkeley Lab’s Energy Technologies Area.

They then designed and simulated what it would take to extract these bioproducts from plant material in the context of an ethanol biorefinery. In this setting, valuable bioproducts would be extracted from the plant, while the remaining plant material would be converted into ethanol.

This helped them answer two important questions: what amount of bioproduct the plant needs to produce in order to make the process of extracting it worthwhile, and what amount needs to be made in order to reach the target ethanol selling price of $2.50 per gallon.

To their surprise, their results showed that the amount plants need to make is actually quite feasible. For example, they calculated that when accumulated at 0.6% of the biomass dry weight, a compound such as limonene — used in flavor and fragrance — would offer net economic benefits to biorefineries. In other words, if they can harvest 10 dry metric tons of sorghum biomass from an acre of land, they need to recover only around 130 pounds of limonene from that biomass.

“The researchers in our Feedstocks Division were surprised by how modest the target levels were,” Scown said. “The levels we need to accumulate in plants to offset the cost of bioproduct recovery and drive down the price of biofuels are well within reach.”

Their results show that this strategy for reducing the cost of biofuels is feasible — but scientists shouldn’t put all of their eggs in one basket, because the market for each high-value product is limited in size. Their analysis suggests that just five commercial-scale biorefineries could support the entire projected 2025 market demand for limonene. Scown said crops need to be engineered to produce a broad range of products to make sure the industry is diversified and the market is not flooded for any one product.

“With techno-economic models, this research provides new insights into the role of bioproducts in improving the economics of biorefineries,” said Minliang Yang, a postdoctoral researcher at JBEI and lead author of the study.

Scown said the biggest impact of the paper is that it offers the first quantitative basis to actually implement this cost-saving strategy, providing a starting point for scientists who are attempting to engineer or breed plants that create bioproducts on their own and offset the cost of making biofuels as a result.

“I think this research is just the first step to demonstrating the future potential of engineered bioenergy feedstock crops,” said Shih, Director of Plant Biosystems Design at JBEI. “I would imagine that our findings will help motivate future efforts to make biofuels economically viable.”

Courtesy Berkeley Lab