Welcome to your one stop blog for all the latest news and updates about The Trial Of The Plant. #TOTPlant will be trending hard… so we’ll be bringing you all the juiciest bits in our convenient live feeds and dank weekly updates.

There’s not much to report on what felt like a bit of a stalled start to day one of the long anticipated trial. Several years of preparation have come down to what will hopefully be another groundbreaking High Court ruling for cannabis legalisation in South Africa. That is unless The State and Doctors For Life (DFL) ever see fit to allow the trial to be broadcast to the public. Despite months of legal eagle work going into securing approval for an online live stream of the trial, these two bodies remain fiercely opposed to letting the trial be made publicly available. Today was perhaps just another stall tactic in what promises to be a trial that will be hindered at every petty opportunity.

Doctors for Life lawyer Helene Davidtsz said “Doctors for Life are concerned less about the live stream‚ but [are worried] about the use of material after the fact”. She said clips from the trial could be taken out of context and re-used. Jules Stobbs of The Dagga Couple countered that the material could equally be miss-used by DFL, “That’s what putting it in the public domain means.”

A closed door court case would only be a win for DFL as they have been struggling to maintain their reputation in the court of public opinion. Something that has been evident in the recent battening down of their social media hatches and partaking in content or YouTube interviews that do not allow public comment. You will have to judge for yourself who has the most to gain or lose from this.

The highlight of the day was definitely the small gathering of freshly buss’ed in protesters outside the court house doors. It didn’t take any hard sleuthing to deduce that they were a passionate group of anti-cannabis protesters affiliated with and possibly financially supported by DFL under there sister organisation, Concerned Young People of South Africa. Some of you may best remember them from that infuriating viral video a few years ago.

They were in fine form again, proudly chanting slogans mostly along the lines of “Cannabis kills!”. The most memorable quote of the day was by far and away made by Dereleen James, leader of the Yellow Ribbon Foundation, “Our Children are dying daily because of drugs such as cannabis (dagga)” and that “there are children raping their mothers, because they are hallucinating, because they are high on cannabis (dagga).”

This does call into question how exactly these kids are being turned into literal mother fuckers and whether it is sexually exclusive to son on mom action, but honestly that didn’t seem like a conversation that would go anywhere. When I asked the good looking former drug addict who claimed to be the leader of the motley crew of protesting merry-men when last a puff on a joint made him want to go balls deep into his mommy? Their response confirmed that they weren’t interested in anything other than making inflammatory blanket statements and repeatedly going on record to make it very clear that they have zero interest in research, science or statistics. None whatsoever.

Snark aside, all in all it was a day of delays and no real drama other than the questionable antics of a group that seems hellbent on proudly having their say on news cameras. So long as it’s not on a courtroom camera in front of you, me or a judge.