While the cannabis analytical industry is displaying consistent improvement, challenges still abound for laboratories and regulators alike. Pesticide testing is the most complicated and challenging area of testing in the cannabis industry. While pesticide testing is important for consumer protection, it is driven to an even higher level of importance by consumers themselves. Consumer expectations for pesticide safety in cannabis mirror their expectations for pesticide safety in food. Unfortunately, these expectations have been shaped largely in response to ubiquitous organic and ‘natural’ marketing from the food industry. In this new and growing cannabis market, consumers rightly expect to receive products free from harmful levels of pesticides. Unfortunately, it is difficult for the cannabis market today to meet those expectations.
Why should it be so difficult to regulate pesticides in cannabis to the same level that they’re regulated in food? The simple answer to this question is that pesticide regulation and enforcement in the food industry is incredibly complicated and supported by hundreds of millions of federal and state dollars. Every pesticide that is legally applied to domestic produce has been subjected to a rigorous process to establish safe use for consumers and the environment. This process is very similar to new drug development in terms of time and resources required; on average, new pesticides require about 10 years and 250 million dollars to proceed through the process from discovery to market.
Step 1: Development
Most traditional pesticides are small molecules just like traditional drugs. The discovery process is very similar: a host of likely compounds are synthesized and vetted to produce a small group of compounds likely to have the desired effect (e.g. pesticide, herbicide, fungicide). Once the best compound for the job is identified, efficacy testing is performed on test crops. In addition to efficacy testing, acute and chronic toxicity testing for humans and wildlife is performed, and environmental fate studies are conducted.
Unlike drug testing, pesticides must be tested over the wide variety of crops on which they will be applied. Also, data must be collected regarding the environmental impact of the pesticide and the effect of chronic passive exposure to both humans and wildlife. The vast amount of data generated during this stage helps to establish safe use for the pesticide on a per-commodity basis.
Step 2: Registration
Once a pesticide is determined to be both safe and effective, it must be registered by the EPA. The registration process looks at all the data generated during the development process to make the final determination as to whether or not the product should be allowed to market. If a pesticide is determined to be both safe and effective, it is registered for use by the EPA with specific instructions for use for each commodity on which it will be applied. This per-commodity registration is a key element for the proper use of pesticides; in fact, a pesticide cannot be applied to a commodity for which it has not been registered. The result of this is that all of the pesticide use and regulation for the food industry is based on volumes of scientific data.
Step 3: Enforcement, Monitoring, and Renewal
The regulatory process continues after pesticides are introduced into the market and used on crops. Monitoring is performed to look for existing or potential adverse effects on humans and the environment from wide use of the pesticide, and harvest batches are routinely tested to ensure levels of the pesticide are within the limits established by the EPA. Additionally, the registration for each pesticide must be routinely renewed to ensure that its use is still safe and required after newer pesticides are introduced into the market. Once again, these evaluations are performed on a per-commodity basis, and the decisions made in the process are based on rigorous scientific data.
What Does This Mean for Cannabis?
Because cannabis is federally illegal, no pesticide is registered for use on it. Worse than this procedural problem, there is no data available regarding the safety of pesticides when used on cannabis – especially when it is smoked or vaporized. This means that when regulators are asked to establish rules for pesticide limits to ensure consumer safety, they are missing the volumes of foundational data on which those decisions are usually made. This results in a lose-lose situation for laboratories and consumers.
Some states have established lists with limits for certain pesticides to be tested for by laboratories. From a laboratory standpoint, testing for a list of pesticides at reasonable limits is difficult but doable. However, the levels established in these regulations are not based on concrete data, which leaves the door open for risk to the consumer. Other states simply require that no pesticides be present at levels above the lowest level established for that pesticide on other commodities.
While this seems like it would result in an improvement for consumer safety over the other method of regulation, it still leaves the door open for safety issues because – once again – there is no data establishing even a baseline level of safety for pesticides at any level. Additionally, in the absence of a list of permissible pesticides, this method of regulation requires laboratories to test for all pesticides at almost impossibly low levels for cannabis and infused products. Regulation in this way requires a level and frequency of testing equal to or beyond the testing that is performed by laboratories supported by federal and state budgets. Currently, the cannabis industry simply cannot support this level of testing in terms of laboratory resources and enforcement activity.
What Can We Do?
Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this question. Regulators and laboratories have made huge strides in terms of intelligent decision-making, availability of guidance, improved laboratory practices, and higher data quality. In the absence of concrete data regarding the safety of pesticides for use on cannabis, it makes sense that use should be kept to a minimum. Continual improvements in the laboratory will result in more accurate results, and ongoing work on the part of regulators will help to clarify needs for enforcement.
Additionally, as resource availability improves over time for laboratories, they can branch out into more complicated methodologies like non-target analysis to help generate real-world data on which regulators can then make decisions. The important thing to remember is that this industry is still young and everyone involved in it faces unique challenges; in my experience, the vast majority of industry players are attempting to make decisions and apply practices in the best interest of both science and the consumer.