History has been made in the Cape Town High Court with a 66 page judgement from Judge Denis Davis and the bench of three. The use and cultivation of the cannabis plant in the privacy of your own home has now been deemed constitutional.
Bruinou.com has never overtly condoned or condemned the use of cannabis but we have always taken a stance that the criminalisation of dagga has had a much more devastatingly negative impact on our society than the use thereof could or can ever have.
We know of people from the Coloured population group who were awaiting trial for possession languishing in jail for longer than the prison sentence that they received when finally their day in court arrived. That was simply because they could not make bail or pay an admission of guilt spot fine. For someone in that position who is not affiliated to a gang, and smokes dagga for recreational use, being in prison awaiting trial is a disaster and some are actually forced to join the number while they are still on 'remand'.
There is also the issue of the Medicinal Properties of cannabis and even something as simple as brewing tea from the leaves of the plant to treat a variety of ailments has made criminals of decent upstanding citizens.
The decriminalisation of the plant for cultivation and personal use will also hopefully permanently close the door on huge corporations that are wanting to control the medicinal use thereof by monopolising the cultivation and processing of cannabis.
Their approach to legislation is that they want to make it legal for big pharma to cultivate and process cannabis while rendering it illegal for citizens to grow their own plants.
We should also not negkect to mention the many cultural groups in South Africa besides the Rastafarian community who hold the use of the cannabis plant not limited to just smoking it, as part of the tenets of their cutures.
We of course know that we have many readers who will now suddenly become avid gardeners.
We will very soon be looking for a Bruinou.com content contributor that specialises in horticulture....
You can download the full judgement here-->
CTHC dagga Judgement Mar17
https://daggacouple.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/CTHC-dagga-Judgement-Mar17.pdf