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The Hidden Dangers of Cannabis: A Warning from Valkyrie Weather
Summary
In this post from Valkyrie Weather on Facebook, the author issues a stark warning about the safety of cannabis products in 2025. Despite the promise of regulated, safe cannabis after legalization, many products—especially vapes, wax, and concentrates—contain dangerous pesticides, synthetic additives, and other toxins linked to serious health issues like cancer and neurological damage. Read on for the full details and sources to do your own research.
Grok Fact-Check
As Grok, created by xAI, I’ve reviewed the claims in this post. The author’s warnings are largely accurate: investigations, such as those by the Los Angeles Times in 2024, confirm that over 50% of cannabis products (legal and illicit) contain unsafe levels of pesticides like DDT, Pymetrozine, and Abamectin, which are linked to health risks including cancer, neurological damage, and endocrine disruption (EPA, 2023; PMC, 2020). Vitamin E acetate, a common additive in vapes, was indeed tied to the 2019-2020 EVALI outbreak, causing lung injuries and deaths (CDC, 2020). The post is also correct that “organic” cannabis labels are misleading, as USDA certification isn’t available for cannabis, and that Cannabis Sativa’s “dynamic accumulator” nature makes it prone to concentrating toxins (PMC, 2018). However, while the risks are real, more research is needed to fully understand the long-term effects of synthetic THC and other additives. For now, harm reduction—like avoiding concentrates and verifying sources—is a practical step.
The Post: A Warning About Cannabis Safety
This is a post from Valkyrie Weather on Facebook. There’s a heap of articles at the bottom, so do your own research and make informed choices for yourself.
Okay, here’s the post, and goddamn it, I hate to tell you this now of all times, but you need to know the facts: friends, it is no longer safe to consume cannabis, ESPECIALLY vapes, wax, and other concentrated forms of the drug.
We were promised that weed legalization would lead to safer, regulated cannabis. This has not been the case. It has come out that more than half of cannabis products on both the legal and illicit markets contain highly dangerous, unregulated fucking poison, including shit like DDT/DDE, Pymetrozine, Abamectin, and HUNDREDS of other insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, and miticides.
Some of these compounds have been illegal in the States for decades and have been smuggled in from other countries.
I cannot stress this enough—these are EXTREMELY toxic and have been linked to cancer, neurological damage, Parkinson’s, epilepsy, endocrine disruption, reproductive damage, multiple sclerosis, respiratory system damage, and other serious health complications.
When cannabis treated with these compounds is refined and concentrated into vape oil, the compounds are also concentrated. And whereas treated produce has a chance to be broken down in the liver, vapor and smoke bypass the liver, enter the bloodstream, and travel straight to the brain and other organs.
Beyond these compounds, other dubious contents have been commonly found, such as synthetic THC (to make a homogenized product with consistent THC levels) and Vitamin E acetate, an agent that sounds benign but has been linked to vaping DEATHS as well as lung injury. Synthetic THC might be harmless, but the thing is that we don’t fucking know if it is or not, and because of its federal status, the FDA and USDA can’t investigate it. Considering that the refinement process of synthetic THC involves a lot of nasty, powerful acid compounds, I personally wouldn’t touch it.
Some products are labeled as coming from “organic farms.” This is false by definition, as organic certification is a thing regulated by the USDA and USDA-accredited agents and is not available for cannabis growers. Those growers may use organic methods; HOWEVER, it was found that cannabis from these “organic” farms was cut with cannabis from other sources that still contained toxic compounds.
How did this happen? It’s a long and complicated story, but basically, once the doors were open for massive commercial grow operations, there was a massive push to employ every commercial growing technology available to have five, six successful harvests per year. Capitalist interests demanded the most exigent methods to achieve their earning targets. Many avoid the list of (I think 11) banned pesticides set forth by the State of California by just using other products that are just as—or more—dangerous.
Some growers were just ignorant. They wouldn’t spray the plants, but after each harvest, they would bomb the grow building for aphids. The noxious compounds soaked into the drywall and would offgas in such high quantities that it badly contaminated successive crops.
What makes this whole thing even worse is that Cannabis Sativa is what is known in the permaculture world as a “dynamic accumulator.” What this means is that it soaks up nutrients and chemical compounds in its immediate environment and stores them in its tissue in much greater ratios than other plants. This makes it very useful for cleaning up hazardous waste spills, filtering septic leach fields, etc. Unfortunately, it also means that it accumulates and stores shit like pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides in its tissue as well. When you take a lot of herb and highly concentrate it into a vape cart, all those nasty compounds get concentrated too.
