CONCOURT RULING A WIN FOR OUR PERSONAL FREEDOM
ONCE again, the general discourse among South Africans about a landmark court ruling misses the point. Like Bruce Lee said: “It’s like pointing a finger at the moon, if you focus only on the finger, you will lose all that heavenly glory.”
Let us take all the substances that are regularly abused – nicotine, codeine and alcohol included, suspend them in a bubble for a moment and examine the ruling generically. It will become apparent that the ruling is not about substance abuse.
It’s about personal freedom and individual agency. The statutes that protect road users, teachers or officers of the law are in place in the same way they have always been. The limitations of freedom of expression are also still in place the way they have always been. Our serious substance-abuse problem will continue unabated in spite of the ruling and not because of it.
The Constitutional Court ruling is deepening our rights to make personal choices and, because of this, it enjoins us to make responsible personal choices, precisely because we will bear the consequences personally.
In some cases that might mean the personal choice to use medicinal cannabis oil instead of chemotherapy. In the US, where the medical use of cannabis is legal in 23 states, the production and prescription of the drug have dealt a serious blow to the illegal drug trade, with legal American growers outperforming drug lords in the free market.
The so-called “War on Drugs” has been waged in the US for 46 years, and has cost $1 trillion (R14.7 trillion) so far, and yet the most effective strikes have come from the free market and, by extension, the freedom to choose.
Just because it is okay to grow weed in your own backyard and for your own use does not mean we are all suddenly going to choose to become potheads. South Africans rightly deserve the extension of their personal and economic freedoms as well. INA CILLIERS DA spokesperson on agriculture: Gauteng Legislature