I mean, I don't suspect vegetable farmers lose much sleep worrying about mischievous teens sneaking into their fields at night to grab fistfuls of organic kale (maybe hipster teens). But there's one area where the difference between marijuana and other crops is particularly stark: pesticides, and it has both growers and consumers concerned.

For every other crop grown in the US, the chemicals used on them (like pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides) are carefully monitored and restricted by the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency. There are different limits set for what kind of pesticides can be used and what is an acceptable level of chemicals that can be left behind on a crop (crops we eat, like tomatoes, are treated differently than crops we use for other purposes, like cotton).

But because marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, there are no protocols for pesticides when it comes to growing weed. From the federal government's point of view, you shouldn't be using any pesticides on cannabis because you shouldn't be growing cannabis in the first place.