Cannabis Pesticide Regulations: State Licenses To Kill

The classic “dose-response” argument states that the severity of the effect of an exposure is directly proportional to the amount of exposure, meaning that the higher the dose the greater the harm and, conversely, the lower the dose the less the harm.

All Cannabis pesticide regulations in every state are based on the centuries-old assumption that there are dosage levels for the ingestion of every chemical below which no harm – or maybe just acceptable harm – occurs. 

While basing Cannabis contamination regulations on this outdated Dose-Response model may be somewhat defensible in the case of adults, for some pesticide chemicals, this outdated model and the accompanying reasoning absolutely don’t apply to fetal exposure from maternal smoking of pesticide contaminated Cannabis.

In fact, allowing any level of pesticide contamination on inhalable products of any kind is very simply a license from the State for even conscientious Cannabis manufacturers to randomly destroy the lives of children in the pursuit of profit margins. Here’s why.

1. Nonlinear Impact on Fetal Development: A developing fetus is uniquely sensitive to even molecular-level doses of toxicants. Unlike in adults, where toxicity generally increases with the exposure dose, and does not happen during developmental growth, even a brief single molecular-level exposure during any of the critical periods of fetal development can lead to disproportionately severe lifelong outcomes.
2. Timing Matters More Than Quantity: The timing of fetal pesticide exposure is often more consequential than the total dose. Even a brief molecular level of exposure during a crucial window of fetal development, such as brain formation, organogenesis, or hormonal programming – processes that may last only hours or days within the total gestational cycle – can lead to irreversible lifelong effects, even if the total exposure time and dose is minimal.
3. Endocrine Disruption Occurs At Any Dosage: Many pesticides act as endocrine disruptors, meaning they disrupt hormone signaling even at very low concentrations. Hormones regulate development in a precise and coordinated manner and disrupting these processes even slightly can lead to significant health effects throughout childhood and adulthood including reproductive disorders, chronic metabolic diseases, or neurological impairments.
4. Epigenetic Changes Don’t Depend on Dosage: Pesticides have been shown to trigger changes in gene expression without altering DNA sequences, and research has also shown that these changes can then be passed across generations. Such epigenetic modifications, which can happen at tiny exposure levels, can lead to lifelong and transgenerational consequences that wouldn’t be predicted by a simple dose-response curve.
5. Cumulative & Synergistic Effects Are Independent of Individual Dosage: Fetuses of smoking mothers are exposed to multiple pesticides at once, in combinations encountered nowhere else in the environment, and these combined substances interact in unpredictable ways. Fetal exposure at even molecular-levels to one pesticide combining with another might lead to far different outcomes than might be expected from individual exposures – something else the dose-response model can’t account for.

So, rather than focusing on whether pesticide exposure is “too small to matter,” Cannabis regulators who take their responsibilities seriously should emphasize biological susceptibility, developmental timing, and long-term consequences in assessing pesticide risks to developing children of Cannabis-using mothers. 

The only rational response would be to create a regulatory environment that financially rewards producers of pesticide-free Cannabis and penalizes producers of contaminated Cannabis in proportion to the amounts and kinds of contamination. 

In effect, the state should sell commercial Cannabis producers who want to use pesticides an appropriately-labeled “License To Kill”, because that’s exactly what a state government that permits exposure of a developing child to inhaled pesticides from a regulated product is doing – accepting a license fee in exchange for permission to destroy the lives of children in the course of enhancing profitability.