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by grawprog 2439 days ago
Yeah as far as I read the problems were linked to illicit THC cartridges purchased on the streets tainted with hydrogen cyanide. A recent hacker news discussion about it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21092770

Street drugs have always had problems with contaminants, whatever kinds of drugs they are. Unfortunately prohibition and black markets tend to lead to this sort of problem.

2 comments

The latest CDC statements have still been that there hasn't been a single common ingredient found in all the cases. And there have been something like 10% of the cases that claim to have only used tobacco and not any THC vapes.

The guy that died in Oregon was using a legal vape from a regulated dispensary.

News publications do a disservice by over-playing the danger, and not differentiating between thc and tobacco, or street products and regulated thc and large nationwide brands like juul. But I don't think you can fully write this off yet either. I'm personally still avoiding vaping for the time being.

Why would you add cyanide to a product you’re selling?
According to Wikipedia, some countries use hydrogen cyanide as an ingredient in pesticide.
To be a bit more precise: myclobutanil degrades into HCN when heated to vaporization temperature

The process of extracting and concentrating THC can also extract and concentrate this pesticide.

Imidacloprid is another pesticide with harmful effects that has been found on cannabis, but seems to be toxic itself (rather than it's byproducts)

Source: https://www.planetnatural.com/marijuana-pesticides/

Pretty sure they meant "for a product for human consumption" :)
they don't, the heating process makes molecules bind to other molecules forming cyanide.