Oh Macleans. How is it that your editorial board, which cares for Canada's most notable weekly news publication, failed so strikingly to understand its subject before making comment? It's not that I have issue with your comment per say - there are reasonable arguments for the use of, and for the restriction of certain agricultural and horticultural chemicals. However, please spend just a measure of time with a dictionary to ensure you understand the difference between a "pesticide" and an "herbicide", because the difference is significant. Sure - they're both organic (ie. carbon-based... not hippy-based) chemicals used in horticulture or agriculture. But one, namely pesticide, is designed to kill animate critters, like beetles, worms and flies, while the other, herbicide, is designed to kill specific forms of plant life, like those unwanted plants we call weeds. You might also use fungicide on your plants which is for... well... you get the idea. While people have all sorts of unsupported ideas and fanciful theories about the effects of certain chemicals on human health, those in agriculture who handle and use all types of chemicals, treat pesticides with a much different protocol than most herbicides. Pesticides present a very different level of risk than do most herbicides.
My concern is that urban dwellers and those who govern them tend to confuse their terms when engaging in passionate but ill-informed tirades respecting what their neighbours are putting on their lawns. The Maclean's editorial staff suggested that a pesticide ban resulted in weeds: that is not likely. An herbicide ban might result in more weeds. A pesticide ban would result in more pests... and, perhaps, certain plant damage caused by those pests. The results of an herbicide ban are very different from those of a pesticide ban. If governments are going to make policies respecting the use of such chemicals, it would do us all well if the politicians and bureaucrats who make the policies, and the journalists and commentators who inform the public debate would all spend five minutes with a dictionary to ensure they understand the most basic information necessary to develop an informed policy. For the weed-worried Maclean's editorial staff, I'm not sure a pesticide ban should cause them such concern. But an herbicide ban... that's something to be feared from their weed-weary perch.
Aside from ensuring no-one suffers an ill-informed restriction on that sack of Weed-N'-Feed in the garage, this particular editorial is, perhaps, indicative of the level of misinformation that informs most public debates. When the editorial board of Canada's most notable weekly can't get the basic meaning of two words correct, where does that leave us on more important issues? Do we really know what we're talking about?
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