{"id":198646,"date":"2017-09-14T07:54:35","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T05:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=198646"},"modified":"2017-09-14T07:54:35","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T05:54:35","slug":"licences-for-medical-marijuana-will-be-available-by-the-end-of-the-year-parliament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/198646\/licences-for-medical-marijuana-will-be-available-by-the-end-of-the-year-parliament\/","title":{"rendered":"Licences for medical marijuana will be available by the end of the year: parliament"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Potential growers of cannabis for medicinal purposes will be able to apply for licences before the end of the year,\u00a0reports\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/citizen.co.za\/news\/south-africa\/1652619\/licence-applications-for-growing-dagga-for-medicinal-purposes-to-be-issued-soon-health-department\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Citizen<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to parliament&#8217;s portfolio committee on health on Wednesday,\u00a0the Medicines Control Council\u2019s Griffiths Molewa said that the council\u00a0would approve regulations in the next few weeks.<\/p>\n<p>These regulations will include who will be allowed to sell the drug, who it may be sold to, and how it must be grown and controlled.<\/p>\n<p>Proposed guidelines for growing cannabis for medicinal purposes were originally published for comment in March.<\/p>\n<p>The guidelines received widespread public attention with comments received from over\u00a0175 members of the public, 221 associations and NGO\u2019s, four industry associations and two government departments.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How it will work<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Speaking on Wednesday,\u00a0health director-general Precious Matsoso said that a number of strict requirements would be in place to guard against abuses.<\/p>\n<p>These requirements will include good agricultural practices, the vetting of staff, as well as a number of security measures.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In terms of the growing process, the Agricultural Research Council has been applying, but now it\u2019s a process that requires partnership between, among others, the department of agriculture, the department of science and technology and the department of trade and industry,\u201d said Matsoso \u00a0.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m hoping that for this purpose\u00a0there will be an inter-ministerial committee. It\u2019s something that\u2019s so significant it requires that kind of response.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Patients who would qualify for using the regulated drug will include people suffering from severe and chronic pain related to multiple sclerosis, cancer and HIV\/AIDS.<\/p>\n<p>Those suffering from severe seizures related to epilepsy would also be considered.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/196764\/sugar-tax-likely-to-be-implemented-in-april-2018\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sugar tax likely to be implemented in April 2018<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaking to parliament&#8217;s portfolio committee on health on Wednesday, the Medicines Control Council explained how and when South Africans will be able to sell medical marijuana in South Africa, and who will be allowed to use it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":147897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26,12322],"class_list":["post-198646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline","tag-marijuana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198646"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198674,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198646\/revisions\/198674"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}