#InsideTheBox with Dr Andy Grey

#InsideTheBox is a column by Dr Andy Grey, a pharmaceutical sciences skilled on the College of KwaZulu-Natal and Co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Pharmaceutical Coverage and Proof Based mostly Observe. (Picture: Equipped)

Remark & Evaluation

third December 2025 | Andy Grey

There was a lot confusion and misunderstandings about how hashish and related merchandise are regulated in South Africa, with authorities’s personal missteps including to the uncertainty. In his final #InsideTheBox column for the yr, Dr Andy Grey clearly units out the present authorized and regulatory scenario and the place we’re heading.

There’s a elementary assumption that underpins a lot of the laws regarding pharmacologically energetic substances, particularly people who have neuropsychiatric results. Some are recognised as having respectable medicinal makes use of, in people and/or animals, and so are regulated as medicines. Others are deemed to haven’t any respectable medicinal makes use of, and so their possession and use is prohibited and even criminalised. A few of these substances are obtained from pure sources, corresponding to vegetation or fungi, and a few have been recognised and used since antiquity, exactly for his or her results, each for pleasure and ritual.

Hashish is a primary instance, which grows on all continents aside from Antarctica and has been used for all kinds of functions, each for its pharmacological actions and for its bodily attributes, as a supply of fibre and vitamin.

South Africa has a protracted and complicated historical past with regard to hashish. It was the South African authorities which proposed to the League of Nations Harmful Medicine Committee in 1923 that hashish be subjected to worldwide regulation. That standing stays in place, by way of the Single Conference on Narcotic Medicine, 1961, to which South Africa is a signatory. Schedule I to the Conference, which is maintained by the Worldwide Narcotics Management Board, consists of “the flowering or fruiting tops of the hashish plant”, in addition to “the separated resin, crude or purified, obtained from the hashish plant”. Events to the Conference are required to “undertake such measures as could also be crucial to stop the misuse of, and illicit visitors in, the leaves of the hashish plant”. Cultivation of hashish is to be regulated in the identical method as that utilized to opium poppies, however with an necessary caveat: “This Conference shall not apply to the cultivation of the hashish plant completely for industrial functions (fibre and seed) or horticultural functions.”

Because of this, hashish was for a few years listed as a Schedule 7 substance by way of South Africa’s Medicines and Associated Substances Act, 1965, and likewise included within the “Undesirable Dependence-Producing Substances” by way of the Medicine and Drug Trafficking Act, 1992. Whereas distinctive entry was allowed for analysis, evaluation or use by a specific affected person, substances in these classes couldn’t ordinarily be possessed or offered.

That complete authorized assemble was overturned by a 2018 Constitutional Court docket judgment which declared the related sections of each legal guidelines unconstitutional “to the extent that they criminalise the use or possession in non-public or cultivation in a personal place of hashish by an grownup for his or her personal private consumption in non-public”. The court docket allowed legislators a interval of 24 months to treatment the scenario.

THC and CBD

Though the hashish plant accommodates over 100 identifiable chemical elements, two are of explicit significance. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the psychoactive element, whereas cannabidiol (CBD) is just not psychoactive. At greater doses, cannabidiol has been proven to be efficient within the administration of some paediatric epilepsy syndromes.

The primary change made to adjust to the Constitutional Court docket judgment concerned transferring THC to Schedule 6 (alongside morphine, for instance) and CBD to Schedule 4 (as a prescription drugs). The Schedule 6 inscription additionally included an exception to permit grownup use, echoing the wording within the court docket judgment. The management measures relevant to a Schedule 6 substance (corresponding to the necessity for a prescription) don’t apply when “uncooked hashish plant materials is cultivated, possessed and consumed by an grownup, in non-public for private consumption”. The Schedule 4 inscription additionally allowed for low-dose CBD merchandise (containing a most of 20mg per day and 600mg per pack) to be regulated as a complementary drugs, supplied the labelling made solely a low-risk declare (a normal well being enhancement or well being upkeep declare or a declare of aid from minor signs).

The South African Well being Merchandise Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) has issued simply over 100 licences for the cultivation and export of hashish for medicinal functions. These licences are for the preparation of the uncooked materials from which medicines may very well be made, however no THC-containing merchandise have but been registered in South Africa. SAHPRA doesn’t report on the variety of part 21 permits issued to particular person sufferers searching for entry to THC-containing medicines, nor on the sources of unregistered medicines accepted in that method (part 21 permits permits for entry to medicines not registered by SAHPRA).

INSIDE THE BOX | Each diagnostic check, therapy, or vaccine is formed by a posh mixture of proof, coverage, and decision-making. Dr Andy Grey unpacks how these forces affect entry, use, and promotion.

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SAHPRA’s hashish cultivation permits don’t permit the sale of hashish merchandise on to the general public. SAHPRA has not issued licences to any shops for hashish or cannabis-containing merchandise. Stores claiming to be licensed “dispensaries” are due to this fact working illegally.

In 2024, the Schedules had been once more up to date, with this exception inserted: “in uncooked hashish plant materials cultivated and possessed in accordance with a allow issued by way of the Plant Enchancment Act (Act 11 of 2018) and processed merchandise manufactured from such materials, meant for agricultural or industrial functions, together with the manufacture of shopper gadgets or merchandise which haven’t any pharmacological motion or medicinal function”.

The Plant Enchancment Act, 2018, is meant to manage the propagation and sale of explicit vegetation, setting high quality requirements for economically necessary varieties, corresponding to wheat. In November 2025, the Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Improvement issued laws by way of this Act, setting a THC restrict of two% for the leaves and flowering heads of hashish vegetation thought-about to be “hemp” (low-THC hashish). That motion offers the readability required to interpret the Schedules to the Medicines Act and creates a course of for the issuing of “hemp” permits for the cultivation and sale of low-THC hashish for industrial purposes.

‘A piece in progress’

Bringing the Medicine and Drug Trafficking Act into alignment with the Constitutional Court docket judgment has been much more advanced than the Medicines Act and remains to be a piece in progress. The part of the Medicine Act which enabled the Minister of Justice to make schedules itemizing substances in several classes was discovered to be unconstitutional in 2020. Future adjustments to the schedules would require an Act of Parliament. Distinct from the Schedules to the Medicines Act, these lists designate which substances, for instance are thought-about “Undesirable Dependence-Producing Substances”, the possession of which can be a legal offence.

As a substitute, the Minister of Justice and Correctional Companies tabled a separate Invoice in 2019, which was lastly handed because the Hashish for Personal Functions Act, 2024. Whereas that Act has been assented to by the President, it has not but been promulgated and no laws have been issued. The laws is due to this fact not but in operation. Rules are wanted, for instance, to specify the quantities of hashish that may be cultivated, possessed or transported. Most significantly, although enabling the possession or cultivation of hashish in a personal place, and due to this fact private consumption by an grownup, the Act doesn’t allow the commercialisation of hashish for “leisure” or “grownup use”, as is the case with alcoholic drinks or tobacco merchandise.

South Africa’s Hashish Grasp Plan, which envisages three separate worth chains, overlaying medicinal hashish, hemp, and grownup use, is now being pushed by the Division of Commerce, Business and Competitors (DTIC). The DTIC plans to submit a Hemp and Hashish Commercialisation Coverage to Cupboard by April 2026 and to desk an Overarching Hashish Invoice by mid-2027.

The 2018 Constitutional Court docket judgment overturned virtually a century of established follow. Whereas the proof for the medicinal worth of hashish and particular cannabinoids remains to be scanty, the idea that such merchandise haven’t any medicinal worth in any respect is not tenable. As with all pharmaceutical merchandise, it is a extremely regulated market with excessive obstacles to entry.

An industrial marketplace for low-THC hashish is already nicely established and the required steps to allow its progress at the moment are in place. Nonetheless, the ill-informed ban on the inclusion of any hashish elements in foodstuffs, which was issued after which quickly repealed in 2025, is indicative of the dearth of coherence in authorities coverage. The problem stays the commercialisation of an grownup use market, and whether or not that can allow the involvement of the small-scale rural growers who’ve historically met demand for the product.

Hashish coverage due to this fact stays in flux, and your entire legislative course of has been marked by missteps, missed steps, reverses, ambivalence and confusion. Some items of the image are in place, however others stay unsure or incomplete.

*Dr Grey is a Senior Lecturer on the College of KwaZulu-Natal and Co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Pharmaceutical Coverage and Proof Based mostly Observe. That is a part of a collection of #InsideTheBox columns he’s writing for Highlight.

Disclosure: Grey serves on three technical advisory committees on the South African Well being Merchandise Regulatory Authority and beforehand chaired the Hashish Working Group.

Word: Highlight goals to deepen public understanding of necessary well being points by publishing quite a lot of views on its opinion pages. The views expressed on this article are usually not essentially shared by the Highlight editors.