A Diamond District jeweler took one of weed culture’s most temporary objects and tried to make it permanent. The finished piece looks like a luxury object. Getting there was not.

Reported with Cesar Soriano

Ahead of 4/20 last year, a bag of cannabis showed up at a Diamond District jewelry shop, and according to the crew, none of it got smoked. It wasn’t a gift for the staff. It was raw material. “We didn’t smoke any of it, of course,” said Angel, a jeweler on the TraxNYC floor. “It was for production.” The shop had never tried what it was about to: taking a real cannabis nug and turning it into solid gold.

This was not a gold-plated flower or a nug sealed inside a shell. The flower itself became the model, packed in plaster, burned out with heat, then replaced by molten metal that hardened inside the cavity it left behind. The weed disappeared. The gold kept the form, down to the texture.

For Maksud “Trax” Agadjani, who founded TraxNYC as a teenager in the early 2000s and has since made custom pieces for a long list of rappers and athletes, appeared in Uncut Gems and, this past January, went viral for a Diamond District brawl that ended with two rival jewelers under arrest, the pull was simple. “The fact that you could take a real flower and turn it into gold is amazing,” he said. He has a simpler word for the reaction it got: magic. “What catches people’s attention is magic,” he said.

The idea came from Cesar Soriano, who publishes under the name T.H.Caeczar and brought the concept to TraxNYC. He’d seen cannabis jewelry before, and credits two makers who sell under the handles @RasBoss_ and @BlingYourBud with getting there first. Their pieces relied on thin plating over a real flower, which could wear down and need refinishing. Soriano wanted the shape of the flower reproduced in solid metal instead, with no maintenance and nothing to wear off. He supplied the flower, from crosses he bred himself. He estimates he dropped off about three ounces, New York’s legal possession limit, though Angel remembered a bigger bag. Soriano stayed involved as the shop worked through the early failures, and later recorded the conversations that form the reporting backbone of this story.

The finished piece looks ready for a luxury showroom. Making it was considerably messier.

Soriano sat down with the TraxNYC crew to walk back through what happened, and High Times reviewed those recorded interviews. Nobody in them pretends the thing came easy. “Honestly, it wasn’t an easy process,” Angel said. “It took us, well, like two to three months.” They were chasing a 4/20 deadline and working blind. “That’s the first time I ever had something like that brought up to me,” he said.

Then the casts started popping and breaking apart. “I think the first five that we made kept popping on us,” Angel said. Once the nugs went into the metal, they came apart. Danny, the designer who took on the casting, watched most of the first run fail. “The first casting, when it was like ten pieces, only like three came out good,” he said. “It was like unique, one-of-a-kind shit really.”

The trouble was density. A nug packed too loose left air pockets, and air pockets wreck a cast. Most attempts failed before the team found flowers dense enough to cast clean. “It was super hazardous,” Angel said of the failures. When one finally held, he said, “it was like a caveman discovering fire.” Even then the yield was brutal: of four good candidates, he said, only two came out the way they wanted.

Moisture turned out to matter too, which answered the question that filled the comments once the shop posted video of the process: why use old weed? Because fresh flower doesn’t cast. Danny said his research pointed the other way from intuition. Drier, staler flower holds its shape in the mold. Wet flower ruins it.

The basic method was familiar to any jeweler. The material going into the mold was not. Instead of a carved wax model, the team used the actual flower. “The piece is dipped in plaster, the plaster hardens, and then you pour the molten metal,” Agadjani said. “It burns out the flower. It vaporizes it and takes its place with gold.” Anyone hoping a little of the plant survives inside is misreading the temperature. “If you’re burning it with a lighter, how do you expect it to be there after melting it with gold?” he said.

“This is way cooler. This has never been done before,” Agadjani said, and he’ll go further, calling it a first in human history. What the interviews establish is narrower. Casting real organic material into metal is an established technique, and Danny said he borrowed the approach from a casting contact who does it with real leaves, usually in brass. Nobody at TraxNYC had attempted it with cannabis before.

The only part harder than turning a flower into gold is agreeing on what happened next. Soriano and Danny described the finish as PVD, a coating they said was intended to add durability and preserve the color. Danny was loose on the specifics. “What it stands for I don’t know,” he said, “but it’s basically just like another coating on top.” Agadjani wasn’t sure it was on the piece at all. “I don’t remember using PVD on this piece, to be honest,” he said. “This should have been electroplated.” The interviews never resolve which finish the sold pieces actually got.

[[ IMAGE: Angel_XRF_Gun_Nug.JPG ]]
Caption: Angel scans the prototype with the shop’s XRF gun, under TraxNYC’s YouTube plaques. Photo by Cesar Soriano.
Alt: A TraxNYC jeweler scanning the gold cannabis pendant with an XRF gun

The metal, at least, is not in dispute. During the interview, Angel put Soriano’s own prototype under the shop’s XRF gun, which reads alloy content and, he noted, had never been pointed at the piece before. It came back at 10.81 karat, which Angel rounded to 11: a shade above the 10-karat core the prototype was built as, under a 22-karat dip. The screen broke out the rest of the alloy too, 39% copper, 10% silver and 5% zinc. The pieces TraxNYC sold were made in 18-karat gold, Angel said, with green diamonds set in the bail. A video the shop posted to Instagram is what turned the experiment into orders. Angel estimated it drew around three million views in its first day and several million since. The first sold about two weeks after it went up. The last went to a longtime client.

At least one buyer walked in with more than looks in mind. Jeff, who found the nug in the TraxNYC display window, knew on sight. “My response was like our old friend Wayne Campbell from Wayne’s World,” he said. “She will be mine. Oh yes, she will be mine.” Holding it sealed it. “Wow, that’s definitely heavy,” he remembered thinking. “It’s like a daddy falling in love with his newborn the first time he holds him.”

For Jeff, the piece is less about showing off than marking what cannabis has meant in his life. “This piece for me is a trophy piece,” he said. “Over the years I’ve benefited in so many ways from the power of this plant, so now this piece is something to never let me forget that.” He sees the gold itself as part of the value too. “This particular one weighs out to exactly 1.5 ounces of gold bullion locked into the piece,” he said, “so for me it sort of doubles as an investment.” The price of a custom one-of-one piece reflects the design and labor as much as the metal, but the gold is real, and that permanence is the whole point for him.

Asked what he’d make next with no budget limits, Agadjani went somewhere stranger. “You could make a miniature grow farm where you could put a seed in, the pendant grows the bud and you grow it in there,” he said. It isn’t a production plan. It does say something about where a shop’s head goes after weeks of blowing up gold nugs to find out what was possible.

Cannabis flower is made to disappear. It gets broken apart, burned and gone by the end of the night. This one went too. What survived was the shape it left behind, fixed in a metal built to outlast everyone who handled it.

Editor’s note: Cesar Soriano (T.H.Caeczar) originated the jewelry project with TraxNYC, conducted the interviews and took the photographs used in this story, and has a commercial interest in the design. TraxNYC sells the pieces commercially. High Times owner Josh Kesselman saw the piece at TraxNYC before this story was pitched, and has appeared wearing it in TraxNYC’s own social media. High Times reviewed the interview recordings and written responses and verified the quotations before publication.

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Disposable vapes are designed with simplicity and convenience in mind for everyday consumers. It’s easy to pick one up and toss, repeating until you satiate your needs. However, simplicity often hides the complexity of its design. Underneath the flavor may have adverse effects if you’re overindulging, which happens under most addictive behaviors.

So, is a disposable vape safe? The answer depends on what you’re comparing it to-and how deep you’re willing to look. This article breaks down the anatomy of a disposable vape, then walks through the three core risk areas: toxic metals, chemical flavors, and fire-prone batteries. Finally, we share fundamental ways you can vape smarter-or safely quit.

What Is a Disposable Vape?

A disposable vape is a small, non-rechargeable vaping device pre-filled with e-liquid, typically made from nicotine salts, propylene glycol, glycerin, and flavorings. Once the battery dies or the liquid runs out, the entire device is thrown away.

They’re known for their convenience: no maintenance, no refilling, no charging. Just open, inhale, and discard. Many users turn to disposables to quit cigarettes. Others are drawn in by the variety of flavors and smooth throat hit.

But just because they’re convenient doesn’t mean they’re low-risk.

Is Disposable Vape Safe? The Full Picture

When people ask this, they’re usually trying to compare it to traditional cigarettes. And yes, disposables may contain fewer toxins than combusted tobacco. However, that doesn’t make them entirely safe, especially when it comes to exposure to heavy metals, inhalation of chemicals, and hazards associated with batteries.

Let’s break each one down.

Heavy Metal Exposure: A Deeper Dive into Nervous System Damage

Disposable vapes have been shown to emit more lead, nickel, and antimony than traditional cigarettes. A 2025 study from UC Davis found that some disposable vapes released more than a day’s worth of toxic metal exposure in just one session.

These metals originate from the heating coils inside the device, which break down during use and become aerosolized, entering your lungs. Once inhaled, they enter the bloodstream and can cross the blood-brain barrier.

• Lead disrupts neurotransmitters and interferes with calcium signaling in neurons. Even low exposure can impair learning, memory, and behavior.

• Nickel is both carcinogenic and neurotoxic, known to damage nerve tissue over time.

• Antimony may trigger oxidative stress and inflammation, particularly in lung and brain tissue.

In teenagers, the risk is even higher. Urine tests show that youth who frequently vape have elevated levels of lead and uranium metals tied to long-term cognitive and neurological problems.

Chemical Additives & Flavors: The Hidden Lung Irritants

Many disposable vapes contain flavoring chemicals that have never been tested for inhalation, but only for ingestion. That makes them risky by default.

• Diacetyl in e-liquid, a buttery flavoring used in many sweet e-liquids, has been linked to “popcorn lung,” a severe and irreversible lung disease.

• Other additives, such as ethyl maltol, vanillin, and cinnamaldehyde, have been shown to damage lung cells and inflame airways.

A UCSF study found that flavorings alone activated dopamine circuits in the brain- mimicking addiction patterns and reinforcing usage behaviors.

Base ingredients like propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin break down under heat to release formaldehyde, acrolein, and other aldehydes-all of which irritate lung tissue and may raise cancer risk with continued exposure. To learn more about flavor-related risks, explore our coverage on popcorn lung.

Battery Safety & Fire Risk: When Convenience Becomes Dangerous

Disposable vapes are powered by small lithium-ion batteries, which can overheat or explode when damaged, overcharged, or exposed to water.

Most incidents are caused by users charging devices improperly or tossing them in household bins where they’re crushed and ignited.

Even online trends, like submerging vapes in water for “quitting,” have triggered explosions and burns.

A single battery failure can cause:

Want tips on protecting your device? Read our Vape battery safety guide to stay charged safely.

Safer Choices & Precautions

If you’re vaping right now, you don’t have to quit cold turkey. Maybe you started to break away from cigarettes or wanted something that felt cleaner than smoke. That’s valid. But you still deserve to know what’s in your device-and how to protect yourself.

Start by switching to refillable, rechargeable vapes made by brands that share lab results and ingredient transparency. Look for e-liquids that avoid flavoring agents like diacetyl or cinnamaldehyde. Never leave your vape charging overnight or plugged in on flammable surfaces. And don’t fall for TikTok trends-submerging a lithium battery in water won’t help you quit, but it might burn your house down.

When your device reaches the end of its life, recycle it properly through electronic or hazardous waste programs. Tossing it in the kitchen trash is a recipe for a fire.

If your goal is to quit entirely, support exists.

Final Thoughts

So, is disposable vape safe? A rather lengthy answer, it does have its risks, particularly with overindulgence and misuse. Disposable vapes may cut out tar from typical cigarette combustion, but they may also introduce toxic metals, lung-damaging chemicals, and faulty batteries. For teens and first-time users, it’s essential to safeguard yourself and understand the risks associated with disposable vapes.

At Ruthless Vapor, we believe in straight answers. Whether you’re just getting started or trying to stop, we want to help you understand what you’re inhaling-and what safer options look like.

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