Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
‘Trial of the plant’ to resume without two plaintiffs
THE second chapter of the “trial of the plant” is due to be heard in the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria.
This time the focus will be on ensuring that anyone who wishes to is allowed to earn a living through cannabis. In 2017 three plaintiffs – Julian Stobbs and his partner Myrtle Clarke, dubbed “the dagga couple”, together with Clifford Thorp – met seven government departments and Doctors for Life in court in a case dubbed “the trial of the plant”.
Following a few months of evidence, the matter was postponed indefinitely and rendered part-heard because the State parties and Doctors for Life submitted thousands of pages of evidence which had to be analysed by the applicants.
Clarke, a member of the organisation Fields of Green for All, has vowed that the battle to legalise all aspects of cannabis would continue.
“We will be meeting with our lawyers to narrow our challenge so as to not fight over territory already gained. Our focus, fundamentally, will be to ensure that anyone who wishes to is allowed to earn a living through cannabis, as so many are hypocritically permitted to do through the cultivation of and trade in everything related to alcohol and tobacco.
“In addition, we plan to eliminate some of the rats and mice left behind by the 2018 judgment.”
Clarke was referring to a groundbreaking Constitutional Court judgment following an application by Ras Gareth Prince and others which saw the effective decriminalisation of the personal and private use, possession and cultivation of dagga in South Africa.
Parliament was at the time given two years to replace the legislation.
Clarke said since 2014, Fields of Green for All had been assisting cannabis users, cultivators and traders to get stays in criminal prosecutions pending the outcome of the “trial of the plant”.
There are now more than 100 cases waiting in the queue with Clarke in this regard.
Four years have now passed since the 2018 judgement and, tragically, both Stobbs and Thorp have in the meanwhile died. “But we feel no closer to a reasonably regulated trade in South African cannabis than we were back in 2017, when fighting the trial of the plant.
“There are now calls for an ‘evidence-based’ policy and, despite it being the constitutional responsibility of the State parties to evidence the harms that they allege that they want to protect us from, it seems obvious to us that we need to drag the prohibitionists amongst us back to court if we are to get us over the line any time soon,” Clarke said, adding that it was time to “unlock the full potential of a sunrise industry”.
The pungent green plant, said to have many medicinal benefits, was the focus of the court’s attention for several days before it was postponed.
Both parties submitted expert opinion on the subject. While the applicants pointed out the advantages of what they call a miracle plant, government still opposed the total decriminalisation of the plant. It, however, did concede some of the medical benefits.