Sean 'Diddy' Combs (Photo: IMDb)
Until late January 2023, I had never heard of the horse tranquilizer Xylazine aka 'tranq'.
The Managing Editor of PIX11 News, Patrick Mason, flagged me back then about a disturbing trend I should look into: an animal sedative being mixed with fentanyl, cocaine, and heroin that turned users into virtual "zombies." Soon after, photographer John Frasse and I visited the Kensington section of Philadelphia, the unofficial capital of tranq use. Time after time, driving under the elevated train, we saw scores of men and women bent like pretzels.
Art El Malik, a Philadelphia man struggling with the double addiction of fentanyl and Xylazine, explained how he realized that something radically new was being added to the street supply.
"You'd see people walking around looking like animals, with their knuckles touching the ground," El Malik told me. He also talked about the sores that turned up on users' bodies that sometimes led to limb amputation. Within a week of our PIX11 interview, the White House declared Xylazine a public health emergency that was driving up fatal overdose rates nationally. A year later, Art El Malik died in Philadelphia.
Drug users in Philadelphia often struggled for balance after taking substances laced with horse tranquilizer, Xylazine (tranq).
Now, the sex trafficking and racketeering case against rap mogul Sean 'Diddy' Combs is putting Xylazine in the headlines again.
Houston attorney Tony Buzbee, who's representing 120 people in civil lawsuits, alleges Combs was using drugs to sedate some victims at parties and record auditions, before they were sexually abused or raped and sometimes videotaped. Buzbee noted some of the people had drug tests performed, when they went to hospitals in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami after the alleged Diddy encounters.
Buzbee said "weird drugs" kept coming up, when he detailed the results of victims' tests during a press conference October 1st. "One in particular that continues to pop up is the drug called Xylazine or tranq which, based on our research, is known as a horse tranquilizer."
Flyer created by “Substance Use Philly” explains dangers of Xylazine, known as ‘tranq’.
Buzbee said he's representing sixty men and sixty women, revealing, "More than 55 percent of these victims filed reports either to police or hospitals."
He said some of them claimed they were given a drink at Diddy gatherings.
"Typically that drink, as reported by these victims, is apparently laced with something," Buzbee said. "Once that drink takes effect, the perpetrators perform all kinds of sexual acts on the victims, many times passing him or her around."
Houston attorney Tony Buzbee Press Conference on Sean 'Diddy' Combs', held on 10/1/24
Sean 'Diddy' Combs' defense attorney, Erica Wolff, issued a statement on his behalf on the day Buzbee made the explosive claims, including one that a minor as young as 9 was among Combs' alleged victims:
"Mr. Combs emphatically and categorically denies as false and defamatory any claim that he sexually abused anyone, including minors," Wolff said in the statement.
Combs is being held without bail at the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges in federal court.
If Xylazine was found in some of his alleged victims, the question is this:
Was the tranq already mixed into cocaine that was also found in their drug tests--or was a liquid form of Xylazine used in drinks?
During my reporting in 2023, I spoke to Derek Maltz, who once led the Special Operations Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Maltz explained that vials of Xylazine could be bought online, especially from Chinese suppliers.
Photographer John Frasse working on the Xylazine (tranq) story for PIX11 in 2023.
Xylazine was produced for veterinary use, and it wasn't listed as a controlled substance with the DEA. It's been regulated by the Food and Drug Administration for more than fifty years. But as far back as 2003, Xylazine was being abused by heroin users in Puerto Rico to extend the drug's 'high', according to Dr. Rafael Torruella of Intercambios Puerto Rico.
It's believed Xylazine made its way to Philadelphia by 2006. But it took about fifteen additional years before it infiltrated street supplies in most states.
Xylazine is not an opioid, but it suppresses breathing and the heart rate, much like fentanyl does. Yet while the antidote Narcan can reverse most fentanyl and heroin overdoses, Narcan doesn't work on Xylazine, because tranq is not an opioid.
Sean 'Diddy' Combs' homes in Los Angeles and Miami were raided in March this year by federal agents, who infamously said they found more than one thousand bottles of lubricants at the locations, along with drugs and three, AR-15 rifles. We don't know if Xylazine was discovered at any site connected to Diddy.
We do know that attorney Tony Buzbee claims he's received 3,285 calls or e-mails about the Diddy case.
"The biggest secret in the entertainment industry, which really wasn't a secret at all, has finally been revealed," Buzbee said October 1st. "We will find the silent accomplices; we will expose the enablers."
Very strange that the Sean Diddy Combs shenanigans only became public after he accused a company for alleged racism. Was he "protected" by some higher authority until then? If so, those people must be outed too. Just saying.