South Africa drafts a national ban on cannabis use, possession and growing

South Africa’s government drafted a national drug bill in 1916 that would have prohibited cannabis use, possession, trafficking and unlicensed cultivation.^[1] It proposed fines of up to one hundred pounds and prison terms of up to three months, but was never presented to parliament.^[1]

Provincial policies had left a divided landscape

Before Union in 1910, different colonies had pursued different cannabis rules.^[1] The Orange River Colony prohibited supplying and receiving dagga, while the Cape Colony reserved cannabis sales to chemists through a poison listing.^[1]

In the Transvaal, mine surveys recorded substantial opposition to a total ban.^[1] Officials concerned with African customs and labour recruitment did not always share the medical campaigners’ demand for suppression.^[1]

The national draft would have brought a broader range of conduct under one drug-control scheme.^[1]

International drug policy provided a reason to act

The bill was prepared in response to the drug-control arrangements arising from the 1912 Hague convention.^[1] It grouped cannabis with substances such as opium, cocaine and morphine within a national prohibition scheme.^[1]

The proposed law also targeted pipes and other material used for smoking the listed drugs.^[1] For users, the controls would therefore have reached smoking equipment as well as the plant and transactions involving it.^[1]

The draft contained two different kinds of dagga

Its terminology reflected confusion over the name dagga.^[1] It listed cannabis as Indian hemp while separately including plants it identified as wild or red dagga.^[1]

Both groups were to be controlled, with plant parts ranging from roots and stems to leaves and seeds covered by the descriptions.^[1] The shared everyday name had therefore entered the draft even though the plants were classified separately.^[1]

Waetjen places this within a longer history of officials and medical authorities disagreeing over the plant’s identity, uses and effects.^[1]

A national ban eventually arrived through another law

The draft’s intended start date was January 1917, but it did not reach parliament.^[1] Nationwide prohibition came instead through the 1922 customs and excise law.^[1]

Officials continued to contest enforcement after that ban, producing a December compromise for remote African areas.^[1] In South Africa, the unused bill marked an earlier attempt to unify cannabis control before the government found another legislative route.^[1]