Pesticide Testing Is Now Mandatory For Washington State’s Cannabis Products

As a cannabis user, it’s your job to ensure the products you’re ingesting are safe…right? Well, not entirely, as it can be pretty challenging to know what goes on behind the scenes of companies, cultivation facilities, producers, etc. 

For this reason, Washington State’s Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) now requires all cannabis and related products to undergo pesticide testing. This was a long-awaited move for the state, considering that most states with legal weed (in some form) already have these regulations and conduct many tests to ensure consumers get the safest products available. 

The key aspect of this new regulation change is how Washington had already tested for pesticides in all medical products, so it was just recreational users that might have been ingesting “unsafe” weed. According to a media release from the LCB, both recreational and medical products will be tested on an irregular and random basis. 

As per the media release, there was no news on how costly it might be to run said operations, which MJBizDaily points out has been a hot topic since marijuana started to gain legal traction around the country. 

While this is great news, Washington State does have a list of permitted pesticides for cannabis facilities to use on their products, which you can find under the Washington State University’s Pesticide Information Center Online Database, notes MJBizDaily. 

The regulation change will go into effect on April 2, 2022, which would hopefully be when existing products sell out.