The safe cultivation of marijuana for consumption is a murky pool to wade through. Marijuana is illegal at the federal level, and thus the EPA is unable to issue guidelines or regulations regarding pesticides and fertilizers that are safe to use.
It would be assumed that marijuana farmers would utilize pesticides deemed safe for food crops. This would be a logical association, but we are forgetting that these pesticides were deemed safe for ingestion, not inhalation.
“…nobody is smoking zinnias, so the safety hasn’t been established for those uses.” – Janna Beckerman, professor of botany and plant pathology at Purdue University [1]
If you were to google ‘pesticides and marijuana’, you would find a plethora of articles and websites. The information is endless, but it’s hard to verify and substantiate.
The disconnect of federal government and the legalization of marijuana is not only inconvenient, but dangerous.
Consumers living in states where marijuana is legal are purchasing and using the plant under the assurance and assumption that it’s safe. It’s legal so it must be regulated…right?
“…the federal government still considers cannabis an illegal drug, the EPA has not approved any pesticides for use on the plant, nor has the agency provided any indication of the level of residues on cannabis products—if any—that could be considered safe…” [2]
Many states have compiled their own lists of pesticides that are safe to use, but without the ‘green light’ from federal government the funding and extensive studies have yet to be performed. For example: Colorado has a list and even offers a sign-up function to be notified of modifications to the list:
https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/agplants/pesticide-use-cannabis-production-information.
The documentation of pesticide use is addressed through the states that have legalized marijuana for sale. Marijuana must be tracked from seed to sale, and stringent records must be kept. This will only assist the process of validating and approving pesticides when they finally do go legal nationwide.
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Information has been gathered from sources deemed reliable but not guaranteed and is subject to change without notice.
Sources & Links
[1] Schiller, Melissa. (2019, January 9). Cannabis Business Times. Purdue Researchers Tackle Cannabis Industry’s Pesticide Problem. Retrieved from:
https://www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com/article/purdue-researchers-cannabis-pesticide-problem/
[2]
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/EHP5265
EPA Pesticide Worker Safety
https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-worker-safety/requirements-pesticide-storage
National Pesticide Information Center
http://npic.orst.edu/health/storage.html