Of all the tertiary education establishments in South Africa, Potchefstroom University has always stood out from the rest for the sheer number of Dagga arrests and incidents. In the last two weeks we’ve had reports from the student body there of mass arrests by either police or private security companies and students ‘taken in for questioning’ about their Dagga use. It is actually alarming how the campus security companies overstep their mandates to ‘secure’ the campus and take it upon themselves to stop and search students for suspected Dagga use. It’s illegal and unconstitutional – but of course it’s ‘drugs’, so the rules fall along the wayside in such circumstances. The ‘war on drug user’ witch hunt is alive and well in the Vaal Triangle.
This weekend we once again noticed a tweet from US based medical marijuana organisation, Project CBD:

The report, titled “Cannabidiol rather than Cannabis sativa extracts inhibit cell growth and induce apoptosis in cervical cancer cells”  was conducted at Potch University. SA Cannabis Community website Below The Lion recently ran an article on the research study, a study which can only be construed as generally good news for the cannabis plant in South Africa.

What isn’t good news in our opinion are the usual double standards surrounding the plant.

On the one hand, students are being expelled and charged with possession of weed, but the medical faculty is doing internationally recognised research (funded by the Medical Research Council) using weed from a township 30k’s from the Swaziland border. (“fresh leaves, stem and roots of Cannabis sativa were collected from Nhlazatshe 2, in Mpumalanga province”.) fresh leaves? stems? ROOTS?
Within the report we also noticed the use of a batch of weed from the Booysens Police station with a forensics date of 2009, which we considered odd. Using 7 year old weed for such a groundbreaking study?

The report suggest Cannabidiol (CBD) to be the cannabinoid responsible for the cancer cell destruction and not the whole plant. This was mentioned more than once in the study. It’s not so much cannabis doing the work, it’s the CBD within the cannabis doing the work. THC was mentioned, but only to report NO cancer busting properties were found in our favourite cannabinoid. This statement flies in the face of international studies on the subject.
We firmly believe in the Entourage Effect of Dagga, and so do our expert witnesses at the ‘Trial Of The Plant’ in August 2017

Could it be that this clandestine study, funded by a South African government agency with little or no fanfare, is engineering a good weed/bad weed scenario?
THC bad, CBD good?. THC stoned, CBD not stoned? At first glance, that’s what it seems to be to us, but of course we may be paranoid because of our dagga use.

So what we have now is a clinical study that confirms the cancer busting properties of a non mind altering part of the cannabis plant, but the mind altering part of the plant in the pocket of those Potchefstroom University students renders them criminals and worthy of being expelled.

Of course, “more research needs to be done”, and you can rest assured we’ll keep a close eye on this study and the state of affairs at Potch University.
After all, Potch Uni has just confirmed the government to be lying to us about the classification of the plant.

Schedule 1 with ‘no medicinal value’ is what the 1992 statute claims.
You can download the study here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5009497/