His attorney, Marc Agnifilo, said earlier Monday that they were "disappointed with the decision to pursue what we believe is an unjust prosecution," calling the entertainment star "an imperfect person but is not criminal."
The former music executive has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) carried out the arrest in Manhattan on Monday, sources familiar with the matter told NBC New York. Combs was arrested in the lobby of a hotel, a representative told NBC News.
"To his credit Mr. Combs has been nothing but cooperative with this investigation and he voluntarily relocated to New York last week in anticipation of these charges. Please reserve your judgment until you have all the facts," the statement from Agnifilo read. "These are the acts of an innocent man with nothing to hide, and he looks forward to clearing his name in court."
NC | The goal of the political leadership in the US, the EU, the UK, and
other ostensibly liberal democracies is simple: to gain much greater,
more granular control over the information being shared on the internet.
As Matt Taibbi told Russell Brand in an interview last year, both the EUรงs Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Biden Administration’s proposed RESTRICT Act (which Yves dissected
in April, 2023) are essentially a “wish list that has been passed
around” by the transatlantic elite “for some time,” including at a 2021
gathering at the Aspen Institute.
The same goes for the UK’s Online Safety Bill, which Kier Starmer would like nothing better than to beef up.
Likewise, Canada has introduced sweeping new internet regulation
through its Online News Act, which includes, among other things, a link tax, and Online Streaming Act. So, too, has Australia through a censorship bill that
is strikingly similar to the EU’s DSA and even includes a punitive fine
of up to 2% of global profits for social media companies that do not
comply.
It’s not hard to see why. With economic conditions deteriorating
rapidly across the West, after decades of rampant financialisation,
kakistocracy, and corporatisation, to the extent that even the United
Nations is now one giant private-public partnership, the social contract is, to all intents and purposes, worthless. Even the WEF admits
that corporations, its main constituency, have turbocharged inequality.
Populism is on the rise just about everywhere and angry and fragmented
protest movements have been growing since at least 2019.
Thanks largely to the countervailing information still available on
the internet, governments are rapidly losing control of the narrative on
key issues, including the war in Ukraine and Israel’s ongoing genocide
in Gaza. Their stock response has been to clamp down on the ability of
citizens to use the internet to generate, consume and share important
news, dissenting views and uncomfortable truths.
theatlantic |strange thing
has happened on the path to marijuana legalization. Users across all
ages and experience levels are noticing that a drug they once turned to
for fun and relaxation now triggers existential dread and paranoia. “The
density of the nugs is crazy, they’re so sticky,” a friend from college
texted me recently. “I solo’d a joint from the dispensary recently and
was tweaking just walking around.” (Translation for the non-pot-savvy:
This strain of marijuana is not for amateurs.)
In 2022, the federal government reported
that, in samples seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration, average
levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC—the psychoactive compound in
weed that makes you feel high—had more than tripled compared with 25
years earlier, from 5 to 16 percent. That may understate how strong weed
has gotten. Walk into any dispensary in the country, legal or not, and
you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single product advertising such a low
THC level. Most strains claim to be at least 20 to 30 percent THC by
weight; concentrated weed products designed for vaping can be labeled as
up to 90 percent.
For
the average weed smoker who wants to take a few hits without getting
absolutely blitzed, this is frustrating. For some, it can be dangerous.
In the past few years, reports have swelled of people, especially teens,
experiencing short- and long-term “marijuana-induced psychosis,” with
consequences including hospitalizations for chronic vomiting and auditory hallucinations of talking birds.
Multiple studies have drawn a link between heavy use of high-potency
marijuana, in particular, and the development of psychological
disorders, including schizophrenia, although a causal connection hasn’t been proved.
“It’s
entirely possible that this new kind of cannabis—very strong, used in
these very intensive patterns—could do permanent brain damage to
teenagers because that’s when the brain is developing a lot,” Keith
Humphreys, a Stanford psychiatry professor and a former drug-policy
adviser to the Obama administration, told me. Humphreys stressed that
the share of people who have isolated psychotic episodes on weed will be
“much larger” than the number of people who end up permanently altered.
But even a temporary bout of psychosis is pretty bad.
One
of the basic premises of the legalization movement is that marijuana,
if not harmless, is pretty close to it—arguably much less dangerous than
alcohol. But much of the weed being sold today is not the same stuff
that people were getting locked up for selling in the 1990s and 2000s.
You don’t have to be a War on Drugs apologist to be worried about the
consequences of unleashing so much super-high-potency weed into the
world.
The
high that most adult weed smokers remember from their teenage years is
most likely one produced by “mids,” as in, middle-tier weed. In the
pre-legalization era, unless you had a connection with access to
top-shelf strains such as Purple Haze and Sour Diesel, you probably had
to settle for mids (or, one step down, “reggie,” as in regular weed)
most of the time. Today, mids are hard to come by.
The
simplest explanation for this is that the casual smokers who pine for
the mids and reggies of their youth aren’t the industry’s top customers.
Serious stoners are. According to research by Jonathan P. Caulkins, a
public-policy professor at Carnegie Mellon, people who report smoking
more than 25 times a month make up about a third of marijuana users but
account for about two-thirds of all marijuana consumption. Such regular
users tend to develop a high tolerance, and their tastes drive the
industry’s cultivation decisions.
The
industry is not shy about this fact. In May, I attended the National
Cannabis Investment Summit in Washington D.C., where investors used the
terms high-quality and potent almost interchangeably.
They told me that high THC percentages do well with heavy users—the
dedicated wake-and-bakers and the joint-before-bed crowd. “Thirty
percent THC is the new 20 percent,” Ryan Cohen, a Michigan-based
cultivator, told me. “Our target buyer is the guy who just worked 40
hours a week and wants to get high as fuck on a budget.”
Smaller
producers might conceivably carve out a niche catering to those of us
who prefer a milder high. But because of the way the legal weed market
has developed, they’re struggling just to exist. As states have been
left alone to determine what their legal weed markets will look like,
limited licensing has emerged as the favored apparatus. That approach
has led to legal weed markets becoming dominated by large, well-financed
“multistate operators,” in industry jargon.
Across the country, MSOs are buying up licenses, acquiring smaller brands, and lobbying politicians to stick prohibitions
on home-growing into their legalization bills. The result is an
illusion of endless choice and a difficult climate for the little guy.
Minnesota’s 15 medical dispensaries
are owned by two MSOs. All 23 of Virginia’s are owned by three
different MSOs. Some states have tried to lower barriers to entry, but
the big chains still tend to overpower the market. (Notable exceptions
are California and Colorado, which have a longer history with legal
marijuana licensing, and where the markets are less dominated by
mega-chains.) Despite the profusion of stores in some states and the
apparent variety of strains on the shelf, most people who walk into a
dispensary will choose from a limited number of suppliers that maximize
for THC percentage.
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