Pesticides In Pot: Overlooked Dangers Of California’s Legal Weed
Cannabis regulators and industry advocates have, for a long time, contended that licensed marijuana products are safer and cleaner than those circulating on the illicit market. Logical, right? Not necessarily. An analysis published Thursday by the Los Angeles Times challenges that claim and reveals comparable pesticide contamination rates in legal and illicit cannabis.
Testing 16 products from unlicensed sellers and tobacco shops, the Times found that half had no detectable pesticides, mirroring the pesticide-free rate in California’s legal market. This, despite California’s tests for 66 pesticides in licensed products, which fail to detect other harmful compounds identified in the Times investigation.
This similarity apparently “doesn’t shock” Josh Swider, CEO and cofounder of Infinite Chemical Analysis Labs, which tests cannabis in California and Michigan. “Normally, the illicit market is just buying from the legal market brokers. …