Cannabis grow clubs doomed to fail as long as parliament drag their feet on legislation

The Western Cape High Court has dismissed the case for The Cannabis Club, in a finding that basically comes down to saying that the whole idea of growing weed on behalf of others wasn’t as clever as it needed to be.

Of course, there will be an appeal and the outcome may shift.

From a legal perspective, get the right judge at the right time with the right argument, and you never know what can happen. In law, all you can do is strengthen your odds.

You can be reasonably confident of a victory but nothing is ever certain.

This is why it took over 20 years to fight the legal cannabis battle in the first place:

The same dude, decades ago, went in on the subject of religion and got dismissed. Years later, he goes in with the argument of privacy and hey, weed is legal. Kinda… Sorta… Well, y’know… In private and all that.

The point is that your argument is everything. Never mind that privacy and religion are both rights in the very same Constitution of the Republic.

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Never mind that the end result is basically the same.

How you get there is what the courts are concerned about.

When it comes to grow clubs, the intent is pretty clear. While yes, indeed it could be argued that the clubs are private and their grow operations for their members fall under the auspices of privacy, one may have a tough time convincing a judge of that.

In the same way that we eventually got to kinda legal weed, because the idea of a cop busting down your door, to prove you’re smoking a joint, was too ridiculous to allow, one must consider clubs designed to sell without selling.

In all corporate law, when one entity is used as a front for an individual, we can “lift the corporate veil” and there is no reason why, despite the legal way pathing that growing clubs engage in, it’s not apparent what is going on.

I’m very keen for the appeal, because the firms involved have brilliant creative minds and we should at least be able to enjoy the arguments they make, even if we can no longer enjoy our grow clubs.

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If their arguments don’t work then we need to focus on where the attack should be placed – the legislature. They’ve now had twice as long as the Constitutional Court has given them to create a legal framework for cannabis and we’re still waiting.

Whether an agent can be appointed to grow for you falls within the ambit of the 2018 case is obviously contentious.

You know who can resolve that contention? The Legislature.

You know who was tasked in 2018 to resolve that and other weed related contentions? The Legislature.

You know who has yet to resolve that contention? The Legislature!

But the Constitutional Court made provision back then for a situation where Parliament just didn’t act.

Clause 15 of the judgement reads that if Parliament fails to remedy the law within 24 months, the reading in of the judgement becomes final. In other words, the Constitutional Court injected changes to the law and they are now final.

What they are not, is definitive of whether “cultivations for his or her private use” can be something outsourced.

As long as there is grey area, the police can have a field day.

To turn it into a black and white matter, back to court we go. Why? Probably because parliament is still too busy dealing with a point of order from 2006.

Also Read: Dagga laws choke good of the drug