Last updated : December 23, 2024
According to an investigation by The Oregonian last month, marijuana users may have something new to worry about: pesticides and herbicides in all forms of cannabis.
The investigation found an illegal amount of pesticides on everything from marijuana oils to buds, plus several pesticides that aren’t even regulated under the state’s marijuana rules. That means marijuana with those pesticides can be legally sold in the state.
The city of Denver has already quarantined tens of thousands of plants at eleven facilities that health inspectors believe have been using unauthorized pesticides. A few plants were released after testing, but two producers have already voluntarily destroyed their marijuana.
One of the chemicals found during the testing was Eagle 20 EW, a fungicide that is legally used on hops and grapes. While legal in some cases, Eagle 20 EW is toxic when it’s heated or burned and it’s not allowed to be used on tobacco. No one knows if it’s safe for use on marijuana that gets eaten.
The plant’s wide number of uses makes it different than most traditional food crops. After all, grapes and tomatoes aren’t smoked, nor are they extracted into products that end up in lotions or infused into other types of food. This means that chemicals that are safe and approved for other food crops may not be safe when it comes to pot.
Oregon isn’t alone trying to address the problem of pesticides and marijuana. Twenty-three states plus the District of Columbia allow medical marijuana and several states, including Oregon, Colorado, and Washington, have recently approved recreational use. Most of these states are just now getting around to rules setting a safe limit on chemicals.
In Oregon and Colorado, retail marijuana must go through testing for contaminants. This investigation just shows that testing isn’t perfect. Colorado, on the other hand, still hasn’t put requirements in place for testing because of delays and Washington is still writing its pesticide rules. California, the largest marijuana producer in the country, has absolutely no regulations for growing weed commercially.
Colorado has attempted to address the issue by publishing a guide for the use of pesticides for marijuana growers. This guide includes a chart with commercial chemicals, active ingredients, and safety concerns.
Testing marijuana for pesticides isn’t just hard to implement; it’s also expensive for states. This means an untold number of pot growers can use illegal chemicals with very little chance of actually getting caught.
Even for legitimate growers who want to make their product safe, knowing what to do is tricky. The federal government doesn’t recognize marijuana as a legitimate crop which means there’s virtually no reliable pest management information for growers, who end up guessing when and how to treat the crop.
While there haven’t been illnesses linked to chemicals on marijuana, it may be a matter of time as legal recreational marijuana use expands. Consumers have never had more information available to them about what’s in the weed they’re buying, but there are still plenty of unanswered questions. One of the biggest might be what responsibilities the states who tax sales might have to customers of a drug still illegal at the federal level.
