Despite its hippie associations and "all-natural" branding, the cannabis industry has been using pesticides for decades. Legal cannabis was supposed to bring pesticides to safe levels but that doesn't necessarily mean consumers will be safe from the negative effects of pesticides — especially since state inspection programs aren't fool-proof, and there is little research on how inhaling pesticides, clinging onto marijuana bud, affect your health. As Elise McDonough from High Times put it back in 2017, “Anyone who smokes cannabis, black-market or otherwise, is unwittingly participating in a huge uncontrolled experiment involving millions of human subjects.” She’s not exaggerating. Pesticides have been a problem even for legal cannabis products in places like Oregon, Colorado, California, and Washington.
