A second marijuana business in Denver in just over a week has voluntarily recalled its products because they contain a pesticide not allowed for use on cannabis.
Denver health officials announced the recall by Nature’s Cure, which also is known as Colfax Pot Shop, Wednesday after tests found high levels of a pesticide that cannot be legally used to grow the crop.
The recall extends to all of the company’s plant material as well as its concentrates purchased before Oct. 6, according to the Denver Department of Environmental Health.
The business has one retail location at 1500 E. Colfax Ave.
The pesticide spiromesifen was detected during follow-up tests at Colfax Pot Shop after inspectors found pesticides in cannabis the shop had grown and sent to a facility for processing into various marijuana-infused products.
That facility, Mahatma, has also been the source of its own recall over pesticide concerns.
An employee who answered the phone at Nature’s Cure said its owners did not have a comment.
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The recalled products include dried medical marijuana with cultivation facility number 403-00651 on the label; dried recreational marijuana with th number 403R-00035 on the label; and concentrates from The Lab, Craft 710, TC Labs, Lab 710 or Mahatma showing either number on the label.
Consumers are urged to destroy the product or return it to the place of purchase.
It is the second business this month to issue a recall of its marijuana over concerns that potentially dangerous pesticides were used to cultivate the plants. The other, TruCannabis, issued a recall on Oct. 13 after tests determined three disallowed pesticides were used to grow plants that were later processed into marijuana-infused products, or MIPs.
As with Colfax Pot Shop, plants grown by TruCannabis and sent to Mahatma for processing were found to contain the pesticides, health officials said.
There have been no reports of illnesses associated with any of the recalls.
MIPs often contain much higher concentrations of pesticides than dried plants processed for smoking because of the method used to extract THC and other cannabinoids from the plant.
Also, pesticide levels dissipate quickly in dried marijuana while amounts found in MIPs typically do not.
The recall is the fourth announced by the Denver Department of Environmental Health since it began cracking down on pesticides last spring, quarantining 100,000 plants.
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The worries about pesticides in marijuana are the result of federal laws that deem the drug illegal and, as a result, safety tests have not been done on the chemicals when specifically ingested on marijuana.
Marijuana can be classed as either a food or a drug because of the various ways it can be consumed. Federal law deems it a drug.
State agriculture officials have proposed a rule that would limit the number of pesticides allowed for use in growing marijuana to about 75 of the least harmful. The rule would allow manufacturers of pesticides among the approved products to petition the government to let marijuana growers use its chemical. The company would have to first prove the pesticide is safe to humans and the environment.
Currently growers can use more than 200 pesticides the state says has warning labels so broad that using the product on cannabis would not violate federal laws that require chemicals to be used only as directed.
Despite the allowance, state officials have said they do not endorse the use of pesticides on marijuana because there is no data to ensure consumers are safe.
David Migoya: 303-954-1506, dmigoya@denverpost.com or @davidmigoya
Updated Oct. 22 at 4:44 p.m. The following corrected information has been added to this article: Because of an error in a city news release, previous versions of this story misspelled the pesticide spiromesifen.
