Neonicotinoids were developed in the 1990s, when crop-destroying insects such as aphids, leafhoppers, beetles and caterpillars demonstrated increasing resistance to existing pesticides. This family of pesticides had the additional benefit of being less toxic to vertebrates, and were more easily absorbed by neurotransmitters in insect brains.
Neonicotinoids became the pesticide of choice, the most widely used and studied in the world, and they are found in approximately 300 insecticide products, according to Deirdre Cummings, legislative director for the public interest group MASSPIRG.
But concern about the affect neonicotinoids were having on non-targeted insects, pollinators in particular, led MASSPIRG, the Northeast Organic Farming Association, the Massachusetts Beekeepers Association and dozens of other agricultural, environmental, climate and pollinator advocacy groups — as well as Massachusetts legislators and other state government officials — to campaign for a ban on their use except by licensed pesticide applicators.