Please note that there is someone posing as Capt Marcus C.I with the phone number 0639603810 contacting Dagga Private Clubs asking all sorts of questions. Please do not engage with this person as we have verified that the neither the number, the name or the title are associated with SAPS operations.

Please tell your staff to end the call and block the number.

The unanimous judgement of the full bench of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, handed down on the 18th of September 2018 and read by the venerable Judge Zondo, makes it very clear that “dealing” (a prohibitionist term when it comes to Cannabis and one which should be reserved for used car salesmen and croupiers in a casino), aka trade, remains ILLEGAL in our country.

Download the full judgement HERE. (You need to be logged in to access our Resources Library).

Last week, a widely circulated article: These stores are illegal in South Africa but there’s one in almost every shopping mall, caused concern, and some outrage, across our Cannabis communities. Here at Fields of Green for ALL, we can assure you that every word spoken by the head of our legal team, Paul-Michael Keichel, was fact. So why were people so exasperated? Because tens of thousands of people are practising what we like to call “normalised deviance”. The government has been unforgivingly slow in enacting the reforms necessary to sort out this mess. As a nation of can-do people, everyone just got on with it the best they could, stretching the limits of what they can get away with.

That is all well and good IF best practises are employed and the establishments have codes of conduct in place to protect staff, the youth and consumers. Fields of Green for ALL’s Dagga Private Clubs project issues certificates to those establishments who appreciate the work we do, and they sign on to a very simple code of conduct. THIS IS NOT A LICENSE. It is quite amusing that some (not all) police think our certificates are something official, but it is not so amusing when we hear that copies of our paperwork are being sold for large amounts.

However, the well-discussed “grey area” in Cannabis law has brought all the scum to the surface too. We can assure you that there is NOBODY WHO CAN MAKE YOUR CANNABIS TRADE LEGAL. There are many “consultants” who claim to be there to protect you from the police. We wager that the threat from these dodgy, clever racketeers, is causing more harm than the police in some areas. Some are charging in the region of R30k a month to “keep you compliant”. Compliant to what? There is no law to be compliant to, no regulations to comply with. Together with ‘dispensary’, ‘compliance’ has become a dirty word in our office.

We have written extensively about the racket that is Section 21 ‘licenses’ and extra layers of padding have been added to this debacle by the establishment of “Medical Cannabis collection points” and there is not a word from SAHPRA about this abuse of their systems.

And then there is police corruption – raids where the stock is confiscated, establishments extorted on a regular basis with no legal recourse for the victims. On top of this insidious practise comes those who impersonate police and trade on the general fear that permeates our “industry.”

Layers upon layers of skullduggery! There is no easy fix for this mess that the government has created. Please support those who are trying their best and not lying to YOU. You should not have to “lie to get high” by pretending to be sick and thinking that the Cannabis being sold in “dispensaries” is anything different or better or “more legal” than that being sold anywhere else.

• Know Your Rights.
• Know Your Responsibilities.
• Know how to look for markers of quality.
• Don’t believe what you hear from smooth talkers promising to make your business “compliant”. All they want is your money.
  
• Support those who are working hard for our collective Human, Cultural and Historic Rights to use, cultivate and trade in Cannabis.
  

  All is not what it seems under the Dagga Tree.