Nearly four years since the Colorado Department of Agriculture started looking into the potentially dangerous use of pesticides in the cannabis industry, state regulators are still looking for “good paths forward to be able to ensure that licensees are in compliance,” says Lewis Koski, deputy senior director of enforcement for the Colorado Department of Revenue.

Regulating pesticide use has “been a very challenging area of policy,” he says, but the good news is that getting all of the licensees into compliance with the approved list of pesticides is still a primary regulatory goal.
“It’s really important because it really is a public safety issue,” he says.
Marijuana Enforcement Division director Jim Burack points out that it’s also an issue for the employees of cannabis businesses, which is why he and Koski “share a certainty that we’re gonna make progress on this, because we all understand that we’re committed to worker safety as well as product safety.”