Australian smokers are set to pay $45 for a packet of cigarettes by September 2020. The tax increase will be gradual, with a steady rise of 12.5 percent each year between 2017 and 2020. As Australia's Treasurer Scott Morrison explained in his budget speech to the parliament: "The net impact of the tobacco measures will raise $4.7 billon over the next four years."

What this means for individuals is that cigarettes will become just about unaffordable. The government knows this, of course, which is why the whole scheme is a sneaky way to get Australians to quit. But the question is, will we? Or will smokers just get a whole lot poorer?

I wouldn't call myself a daily smoker, but I do enjoy the odd dart on a night out. Drake sums it up pretty well: "I smoke when I drink / it's tradition." But $45 a pack? My initial reaction was, Fuck that, I'll just quit, but nothing's ever that black-and-white. So to find out if others feel the same, I headed out to some nightclub smokers' areas around Melbourne.

All photos by Sean Foster

Momcilo, 20, Tradie

VICE: Hey mate, did you hear that by 2020 smokes in Australia could cost as much as $45 a pack. If that happened, would you quit?
Momcilo: I would consider it. I've tried before, but the price of smokes has never really deterred me. I've been smoking for six years. I grew up overseas and started smoking when I was in eighth grade just to fit in with the cool guys and stuff. From then, I've kept on going, and now I can't put them down.

Do you think raising the price is for the greater good?
Putting the price up will make things worse. They say upping the price will help people stop smoking, but there are homeless people smoking on the streets, so it will cause more trouble. People will start robbing one another. If cigarette prices go up, it will cause more crime. It happened a couple of months ago at that prison in Melbourne. They banned cigarettes, and it caused a riot. And that's exactly what's going to happen.

Peter, 21, DJ/Engineer

Hey Peter, if cigarettes reach $45 a pack, would you quit?
No. The thing is that it's not about making people quit. The government is just doing it as a revenue-raising scheme because it knows people aren't going to quit. At the end of the day, the government doesn't care about individuals. It cares about the fucking money, the fucking tax, all that shit. Dude, people are still going to buy cigarettes. I think if they go up to $45, 7-Eleven should be prepared for more armed robberies.

How many cigarettes would you have a day?
Depends on funds. Usually five, but more on weekends. I'm already paying $26–$30 a deck. I've traveled the world. In America, ciggies are five or six bucks. In Greece, they're two or three euros. Like, instead of being a nanny state and making people quit, people can take charge of their own actions and do what they want. If people want to smoke and go kill themselves, then yeah, go do that. People know the risks.

Jessica, 19, works at McDonald's

Hey Jess, cigarettes are set to go up to $45 a pack. If that was the case, would you still buy smokes?
I'm not a pack-a-day smoker, but I'll buy a deck if I'm going out. I would consider quitting because the price range is ridiculous, but hopefully I'm not smoking by 2020. It's a sort of an age thing, I guess. You know we're young and having fun, so have a dart with mates and all that. But once I get to a certain age, I'll start to settle down.

When did you first start smoking?
When I was sixteen. Everyone was doing it, so I guess it was peer pressure. I reckon it's a good way to get to know people as well. You'll have a dart, and the conversation starts.

Let's imagine a world where smokes went up to $45 tomorrow, and you're heading out. Do you buy a pack?
It's pretty bad to say yes. It all depends on money situation, but I reckon, yeah. You see people who have been trying to quit for forty years, and if the price goes up, it's pretty unfair to just expect them to quit. They're still going to have to buy darts to keep them going in their daily routine.

Darz, 25, pizza chef

Hey mate, do you smoke every day?
Yeah, most days. I only started smoking a year and a half ago. But I've smoked weed every day for ten years. And the first time I quit weed for a few months, that's when I picked up cigarettes, which wasn't good.

Do you prefer weed or cigarettes?
They both have their negatives. Weed makes you lazy as fuck, but it's not as bad as cigarettes. You can't win mate.

How would you feel if smokes went up to $45 a pack?
I'll be quitting. Well, I hope I would be. Otherwise I'll be pretty fucking broke. I think it's a good thing because it will make people smoke less.

What is it about smoking you enjoy?
Just the feeling. Like, I don't know. It's kind of a habit now. Just shows you how addictive it is. I don't know what the fuck I enjoy about it. When I smoke weed, I get a feeling, but with cigarettes, you're just killing yourself.

Follow David Allegretti on Twitter.

The potential catalyst for turning red-blooded Americans into maple chasers (photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore)

It's understandable for sane people to think about how they can escape the US in the wake of a Trump presidency. Since the primaries began, more and more Americans are considering a relocation, so much so that there have been notable spikes in Google searches about immigrating to Canada. Now, there's even a fucking dating website that will link up disenfranchised Americans with Canadians. For a group of people who think Canada is full of igloos (I can say this as an American living in Toronto), ya'll seem pretty obsessed with living here all of the sudden.

I met Richard Ford at a fancy literary party in New Orleans. I knew he'd be there, so I'd brought my "Rock Springs, Wyoming" sweatshirt. Ford's most famous story collection, Rock Springs, is named after my hometown. I'd long thought it would be funny to have a photo of myself in that shirt with Ford.

I found him on the porch catching fresh air and a break from the ass-grabbing sycophants inside. When I told him my plan, he smiled and agreed, his blue eyes twinkling mischievously. I put on the sweatshirt and stood beside him as we waited for my friend to get her camera out.

"Did you ever spend much time in Rock Springs before writing that story?" I asked.

"Fuck no," he sneered. "Do you?"

I mumbled something about my parents still living there, and then we waited for our portrait in silence.

Ford is not the only author repulsed by the place I'm from. In The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, Alexandra Fuller writes:

If La Barge or Wamsutter or any of the other little flash-in-the-pan towns in the West are like waking up the morning after the night before with a beer hangover, Rock Springs is like waking up after a weeklong methamphetamine binge. It looks like a town thrown together in the throes of a temporary fit of panic—cheap clapboard trailer parks and blowaway boomtime mansions confined by big-box stores. Even the people who love it, love it the way a parent protectively loves their roughest child—because no one else will.

Neither has Rock Springs—a population of around 25,000 isolated in the vast Red Desert—escaped news media's notice. The town sputtered to life in the late 1800s around coalmines that fed the new transcontinental railroad. Since then, it has experienced dramatic booms and busts thanks to fluctuating prices of the minerals its residents extract from the ground—coal, oil, trona, gas. During the raging 1970s, 60 Minutes targeted Rock Springs for an exposé on lawlessness and graft. Dan Rather introduces the segment walking up a sunburned hillside just outside town: "This is Rock Springs, Wyoming. They say that when you come out here, you should set your watch back... about fifty years." He remarks that the town hosts "more hookers than you can shake your wallet at."

An episode of A&E's City Confidential explores a cop-on-cop murder that took place shortly after 60 Minutes left town. The (white) cop was found not guilty of killing the (Puerto Rican) cop after Gerry Spence, the nation's most winning defense attorney, had his client demonstrate his quick-draw skills in the courtroom to corroborate his claim of self-defense. There's a famous screenplay about the case that's never been made into a movie. In the 1980s, a Harper's reporter tracked down the acquitted killer in central Wyoming, chasing a rumor that alleged the lawman had left some cattle rustlers dead in the desert. The journalist returned an inconclusive report.

Earlier this year, the sordid chronology of Rock Springs received an update. Heavy: A Memoir of Wyoming, BMX, Drugs, and Heavy Fucking Music by J. J. Anselmi is perhaps the first nationally distributed Rock Springs story told by a local. Anselmi's grandfather was a businessman at the center of the scandal 60 Minutes exposed, and the author and I once played together on a little league baseball team. While outsider accounts of Rock Springs tend to emphasize its Wild West character—which is totally real—Anselmi's book focuses on traits I find more familiar: the town's crushing provincialism, severe drug problem(s), plague of suicides, and its knack for instilling in young people the sense that both the town and its residents' lives are depressing dead-ends.

J. J. Anselmi. Photo courtesy of Rare Bird Books

Heavy describes its author's attempts to construct an identity opposed to what he perceives as the nightmare around him. Though his family name is known throughout town in association with prominent businesses, Anselmi's dad is the black sheep, a stoner dropout whose fuck-up demeanor pushes young Anselmi toward straightedge—Rock Springs is the type of place where an eighth grader can sincerely develop an identity based on sobriety. Anselmi then gravitates toward heavy metal and BMX, embracing each macho subculture like a faith, before plunging into a years-long murk of booze, tattoos, drugs, and self-hate. Suicide shadows him throughout the book, with his dad's friends and his own classmates offing themselves throughout the chapters—isolation, drug abuse, and abundant guns contribute to Wyoming's perennial placement near the top of the national suicide charts. Toward the memoir's end, Anselmi decides to kill himself, too—then opts to get an MFA instead.

I left Rock Springs when I was 18 and spent the next 13 years living mostly in cities—Chicago, Salt Lake, Buenos Aires, New Orleans. Whenever people asked where I'm from, I'd just say, "Wyoming." (The most common reply was, "You're the first person I've ever met from there!") Now that I've moved back to the state—to Laramie, a college town—I tell people I'm from Rock Springs, and they sort of inch back and widen their eyes, like they're reassessing me or sensing for signs of danger. One guy said, "That's the first place I was offered meth." (Funny—me, too.)

The author and Richard Ford. Photo courtesy of the author

Certainly there are myriad ways to exist in Rock Springs, and I'm sure some are even distinguished by quietude and prosperity of the spirit. But my relationship with the town growing up was abrasive, like living each day rubbing up against sandpaper. I know many other people, from all walks of life, felt the same—Anselmi included. The wild economic swings of a boomtown—where one year the town is desolate and broke and the next it's overflowing with rough young men lusting for cash and vice—create something of a collective neurosis, a pervasive edginess that never dissipates. Hundreds of miles of hardscrabble desert in each direction, peopled as sparsely as northern Nevada where they test nuclear weapons, intensifies this effect.

But rubbing against sandpaper makes you tough, and I've honestly never been to a tougher town than Rock Springs—or at least one so straightforward about its calluses. The roughest child, indeed. When some candy-ass novelist like Richard Ford or Alexandra Fuller scoffs, or some jerk-off TV crew arrives to film an update on the scandalous Wild West, it's easy to see they're projecting on the town their desire for a mythological American underbelly. Heavy is a portrait of the psychological grind taking place inside the Rock Spring residents upon whom they project. It's not as sensational as a murder trial, but it's more real, and it's just as high-stakes.

Follow Nathan C. Martin on Twitter.

Iraqis check the site of an car bomb attack by Islamic State in Sadr City, Baghdad, on May 11, 2016. Some 64 people died in the blast. (Photo AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images)

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

Sanders Wins in West Virginia
Bernie Sanders has vowed to keep fighting all the way to his party's July convention after defeating Hillary Clinton in West Virginia. Sanders won 51 percent to Clinton's 36 percent, but Clinton remains the mathematically inevitable candidate. "We have an uphill climb ahead of us, but we're used to that," said Sanders. —CBS News

Ohio Gets Closer to Approving Medical Marijuana
Ohio's House of Representatives passed a bill on legalizing medical marijuana by a vote of 71-26, and will now go to the Senate for approval. The bill states that home-grown weed will remain illegal and that minors must have consent from parents in order to use medical marijuana. —WBNS 10TV

White Nationalist on Trump Delegate List
Donald Trump's campaign has been told it cannot remove a prominent white nationalist William Daniel Johnson from his list of Californian convention delegates. The campaign blamed a "database error" and tried to remove him. But the California Secretary of State's office said the deadline for revisions had passed. —the Guardian

Senate Republicans Launch Facebook Probe
The US Senate Commerce Committee, led by Republican Senator John Thune, has launched an inquiry into Facebook's news curation after it was reported to have censored conservative stories. The committee has written a letter to Mark Zuckerberg asking him to prepare staff to be questioned on the issue. —Gizmodo

International News

ISIS Car Bomb Kills 64 in Baghdad
A car bomb attack in the Iraqi capital has killed at least 64 people and wounded at least 87 others. The blast happened in a crowded market in a Shia district during the morning rush hour. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack. —BBC

New Air Strikes Kill at Least 14 in Syria Despite Ceasefire
Air strikes on the rebel-held town of Binnish in Syria's northwest Idlib province have killed at least 14 people. The strikes happened hours after a ceasefire ended in nearby Aleppo, and were carried out be either Syrian government or Russian planes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. —Al Jazeera

Bangladesh Hangs Islamist Leader
Motiur Rahman Nizami, leader of Bangladesh's Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, has been hanged for genocide and other crimes committed during the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. Jamaat-e-Islami called for a nationwide strike on Wednesday in protest. —Reuters

Australians Detained for Attempting to Sail to Syria to Join ISIS
Australian police have detained five men suspected of planning to sail a small boat from the Queensland coast to Syria to join ISIS. Police are investigating the possibility the men were planning to make their way to Syria by sailing to Indonesia, then on to the Philippines. —CNN

Prince. Photo via Wikimedia.

Everything Else

Police Question Prince's Doctor
Detectives in Minnesota have questioned a local doctor who saw Prince twice in the weeks before he died. Minneapolis-area family doctor Michael Todd Schulenberg treated Prince with prescription medication the day before he died, and returned to Paisley Park to deliver test results the morning of the singer's death. —Los Angeles Times

West Point Cadets Won't Be Punished
West Point military academy has said the 16 black female cadets who posed for a photo with raised fists would not be punished after deciding the photo was not a form of protest. The academy said it was done to demonstrate "unity" and "pride." —The New York Times

UK Queen Caught Calling Chinese Officials 'Rude'
Queen Elizabeth II was overheard describing Chinese officials as "very rude" while being filmed in conversation with a police officer at an event celebrating her 90th birthday. In China, coverage of the remarks was censored. —The Guardian

Dating Site Helps You Marry Canadians to Escape Trump
New dating website MapleMatch.com is encouraging disenfranchised Americans thinking about leaving the country if Donald Trump wins in November to link up now with Canadians. It promises to "make dating great again." —VICE

Done with reading today? Watch our new film 'We Go Inside Toronto's Illegal Edible Market'

Have you ever found yourself entranced by an ordinary item to the point were you were on the edge of objectophilia, the condition of loving the inanimate? Have you, say, stared too long at an array of different fruits and veggies at the supermarket? It's not wrong exactly, just, well, out of all the things that could excite you—bodies, certain parts, types of play—you went home with a shock absorber you bought from the hardware store because you were curious what it might feel like over your genitals. Ken Lavey's work, Perfect Odd Thing, isn't that exactly, but it's highly suggestive and seems made to arouse.

Lavey's photos are about transformation and sexuality, stigma and debauchery. You didn't think you could get all of that out of a pair of vacuum cleaner parts, but there you go—Lavey forces you to pay attention to something that has never drawn your eye, maybe because it was forbidden, maybe because you jsut never thought of it.

Being in Lavey's studio is like being in a deconstructed hardware store. Everything is perfectly placed and there are tripods everywhere. Things are positioned so precisely. I'm shocked when Lavey tells me he's never really thought about going into a sex shop before. Although with a studio like his, who needs to?

–Efrem Zelony-Mindell

Ken Lavey is an artist and photographer based in New York. You can check out his work here.

Efrem Zelony-Mindell is a writer and photographer based in NYC.

As the old saying goes, "Nothing good ever happens after midnight." Or maybe it's "Nothing good ever happens after 2 AM." Anyway, you can be certain that nothing good is happening once it's getting on for 5 AM and you're on a "hoverboard" in a parking lot in a West Hollywood gas station having an argument with an employee through the bulletproof window thing, but that's where Tostitos Tyler found himself one recent Saturday-night-turned-Sunday-morning.

I don't know why his name is Tostitos Tyler, except that he's trying to buy Tostitos for whatever reason. I don't know why he's also trying to get pasta and Pop-Tarts. I don't know why he has to bring his dog to be part of this whole transaction. But mostly, I don't know why he's such an asshole, yelling at the poor counterman and saying shit like, "How do you even work here?" and "You don't know how to fucking read, man," and that old gem, "I am the fucking customer!"

He lectures the cashier like a child, curses at him, yells out "TOS-TI-TOS," and near the end of their already-way-too-long interaction has the chutzpah to ask the guy to apologize to him. He's whiny, he's entitled, he's so grating he compresses the cringes you feel during an episode of Girls into four tight minutes of shittiness. There are worse things to be than a douchebag who's having a fit because it's taking more than a few seconds to get exactly what you want in the middle of the night, but why be that person? Just wait a few seconds, take a few deep breaths, pay attention to your dog, swipe mindlessly through the social media site of your choice. Just shut the fuck up for a minute.

I usually stick up for millennials. For every thinkpiece calling our generation entitled narcissists, I say, "Hey, what about the longterm economic trends forcing us into debt and making us poorer than our parents? What about the culture of instant gratification fostered by the boomers and normalized by Gen X? What about you, in other words, you hypocritical ratfucks?" Young people are always whiny little shits—remember the music of the 60s?—and I can excuse a lot of lousy behavior by way of youth and by way of growing up in an era that gave us 9/11, George W. Bush, a nasty recession, and a loose labor market, all in the span of a decade.

But: this guy. I can't defend him. He's obviously a millennial, just look at his topknot and sandal-hoverboard combo, but he's not the enlightened sort of millennial who has his shit together, wants to make the world a better place, and is usually appearing in YouTube videos encouraging me to learn how to code. He's the other kind of millennial—I want to call him a loser but the word loser has echoes of romance, of cool down-and-out-ness, and Tostitos Tyler doesn't have any kind of SoCal surf bum/stoner/The Dude mystique to him. He manages to make having nothing to do a stressful experience. He's out before 5 AM on Sunday and is going grocery shopping. For pasta. What, is he going to boil some water when he gets home? Eat pasta and pop tarts and Tostitos for breakfast? One, that's not exactly a balanced meal, dude, and two, what the fuck are you doing? Don't tell that cashier to "get your fucking shit together, man," get your shit together. Fuck.

We don't get the cashier's perspective in all this. You can hear his side of the argument faintly, but mostly he exists in our minds: Struggling to get the goddamn shit this guy wants so he'll leave, working bleary-eyed at a shift no one ever wants, enduring the abuse in anticipation of his mandated-by-law ten-minute break. He obviously doesn't want to be there getting yelled at by some guy with a carb crazing and a $400 scooter. He has no idea why this transaction—a humiliation for both sides, a play with no ending and no beginning and no protagonist—has to exist in the first place.

To back up ever so slightly, there was a time, decades ago, when big-time intellectuals like John Maynard Keynes, predicted that technology would make humanity so productive we'd only need to work a handful of hours a week. This didn't happen. Productivity as defined by economists has increased all right, but wages have stagnated—just ask the nearest millennial if you don't believe me—and the vast majority of the resulting economic gains have trickled up to the top of the economic ladder.

Wall-E depicted a dystopian version of the fate Keynes predicted, where mechanized labor led to people growing fat and complacent, sitting in chairs while their every need is tended to. You're supposed to laugh at them and be a little horrified, but is that future really worse than a present where assholes role around and demand extremely specific brands of snacks from beleaguered clerks? Why is there not some way for Tostitos Tyler to get his Tostitos without inflicting pain on someone else? Why is the cashier forced to endure that pain in exchange for what probably isn't much of a wage? Who stuck them in the gas station to argue with one another?

All to say, I can understand why the cashier is being a bit of a dick to Tostitos Tyler, maybe even getting things wrong on purpose to see him throw a tantrum. Tostitos Tyler is a dick. Tostitos Tyler is a symbol of oppression that's almost a bit too on the nose with that man-bun and hoverboard. Tostitos Tyler is also, in all likelihood, oppressed in some way himself.

If the cashier is not there by choice, well, neither is Tostitos Tyler. He's not zooming down to the gas station to buy pasta at 5 AM on a whim. Something has gone wrong. Tostitos Tyler is in bad shape, maybe partially by choice, sure, but the fabric of America has failed Tostitos Tyler too. The future has collapsed on him, the same as it has collapsed on all of us. Now he can't even get the one—OK, three—things he wants, the snack foods that are the only worthwhile good that this post-whatever version of capitalism can produce. Can you blame him for trying to exert control over the tiny sliver of his life he still has command over? For lashing out, in the throws of an early-morning desperation, at the only person he can lash out at?

Well yes, yes we can.

Image via 1950s Unlimited/Flickr

Last week, lawyers in New York and California initiated a class-action lawsuit against Quaker Oats for selling oatmeal labeled "100% natural" even though it contains trace amounts of the not-so-natural herbicide glyphosate, also known as Roundup. Labeling aside, the suit brings up an even bigger question: How freaked out should we be about chemicals in our breakfast?

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared glyphosate "a probable human carcinogen" last year, heightening consumer concern about the use of the herbicide on our foods. Glyphosate is mixed with other chemical ingredients to make Roundup, and is widely used on food crops to kill unwanted weeds in agricultural production; it's also frequently used in home gardens. The WHO report pointed to an increased risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in humans who are occupationally exposed to the herbicide, and noted the prevalence of rare liver and kidney tumors in animals exposed to glyphosate.

Manufactured by the biotech company Monsanto, glyphosate is the most commonly used broad-spectrum herbicide in the world. Its use rose globally from 112.6 million pounds in 1995 to 1.65 billion pounds in 2014. This spike coincides with the introduction of "Roundup Ready" GMO crops, which are genetically engineered to withstand the herbicide. In addition, even some non-GMO crops, including wheat, oats, barley, and beans, are sprayed with Roundup in a practice called desiccation, which dries the crops and speeds ripening. This has prompted concern about increased residues—as has the fact that, in 2013, the EPA raised the allowable limit for glyphosate residue in food. This means there's a good chance Roundup residue lurks in both GMO and non-GMO foods. (The use of glyphosate, as well as many other pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides, are prohibited in organic farming, so certified-organic foods are likely free of these residues.)

Testing done on a sample of Quaker Oats Quick 1-Minute Oats at an independent lab and paid for by The Richman Law Group, which is representing plaintiffs in the new lawsuit, found levels of glyphosate at 1.18 parts per million. The EPA currently allows up to 30 parts per million in cereal grains. A spokesperson for Quaker Oats wrote in an emailed statement to VICE, "Any levels of glyphosate that may remain are trace amounts and significantly below any limits which have been set by the EPA as safe for human consumption." Echoing that sentiment, an EPA spokesperson, also in an emailed statement to VICE, wrote, "In setting tolerances for pesticide residues on various foods, EPA ensures that there will be a reasonable certainty of no harm to people when they consume food containing residues resulting from use of the pesticide."

In other words, both Quaker Oats and the EPA take the position that you should not worry about Roundup residue in your oatmeal or elsewhere because the levels are below the threshold the EPA has set for "no harm."

Researchers cannot ethically test the effects of glyphosate in a randomized controlled experiment on humans, so instead they have to rely on animal studies as well as large-scale observational studies, in which they draw conclusions based on associations (for instance, the fact that people whose job it is to spray crops with Roundup appear to have higher rates of cancer). And given the findings so far, scientists who study environmental chemicals strongly disagree with the idea that low levels of glyphosate are harmless. Fourteen of these experts recently published a consensus statement expressing concern that the herbicide may be an endocrine disrupting chemical (EDC), which means it has the potential to be biologically active even in extremely low doses. Thousands of separate studies on EDCs have shown that low-level exposure could have detrimental health effects—including an increased risk for certain cancers, infertility, obesity, diabetes, and developmental problems. This suggests that even trace amounts of chemicals like glyphosate found in oats or other foods could be carcinogenic or disruptive to other important biological functions. "Hormones themselves are active at parts per trillion and parts per billion levels ," John Peterson Myers, chief scientist at the research and policy nonprofit Environmental Health Sciences, told VICE. "In the real world of biology, those levels have huge effects. Hormone-disrupting chemicals can also be biologically powerful at those doses."

Studies have shown that glyphosate may interfere with fetal development and cause birth defects, and while much is still unknown, emerging work in rodent models shows that it has effects on male reproductive development. The endocrine system is exquisitely sensitive to very low dosages of EDCs, Andrea Gore, professor and Vacek Chair of pharmacology at The University of Texas told VICE, and this is especially true when it comes to developing fetuses, infants, and children. "Small fluctuations from the norm can change developmental processes and lead to a dysfunction at the time of exposure, or sometimes, many years after exposure," she said.

Given the research on endocrine disruption, the levels allowed by the EPA are too high, and have no basis in science, Bruce Blumberg, professor of developmental and cell biology and pharmaceutical sciences at UC Irvine, told VICE. "This is a political decision rather than one based on reasonable, peer-reviewed science." Blumberg is especially concerned about the desiccation, which could mean there are potentially even greater amounts of Roundup residue on our foods than previously accounted for. "Glyphosate and other herbicides were never intended to be used and I am truly astonished that the EPA allows it absent a showing of how much glyphosate or other herbicides are present on the final product."

Another concern is that Roundup is actually a mixture of glyphosate and other potentially harmful chemicals—a combination that has never been tested. Tests are performed on glyphosate alone, a fact several scientists VICE spoke to pointed to as being a major and often overlooked concern.

"The actual product used is a mixture of chemicals, combined to increase the effectiveness of the active ingredient," Myers said. "The actual product mixture is never tested in regulatory testing. Never—even though that is what people are exposed to."

The widespread use of Roundup means there are potentially many food products—some carrying an "all-natural" label on their packaging—that also contain glyphosate residue. But consumers would have no way of knowing: Despite having a set limit for the herbicide residue in food, and despite the fact that it was introduced to our food system in 1974, the FDA has never monitored levels of glyphosate in food.

But in February of this year, the agency announced that it would begin monitoring levels in soybeans, corn, milk, and eggs. Notably absent from this list is the food in question in the lawsuit: oats. The FDA would not provide any further information about this when contacted by VICE, but a spokesperson said the agency has recently developed "streamlined methods for testing glyphosate."

There doesn't seem to be any disagreement about the presence of Roundup in our oatmeal; Quaker Oats and the EPA admit it's there. It's likely in myriad other food products as well. And that's the deeper relevance of this lawsuit: It points to the fact that so much is unknown or undisclosed about what actually ends up in our food. Where regulatory agencies have dragged their feet, and where food manufacturers continue to make dubious claims on labels, consumers are taking matters into their own hands with class-action lawsuits—Kim Richman of Richman Law group, for instance, has also filed class action lawsuits in regard to the presence of trans fats and GMOs in foods.

R. Thomas Zoeller, a biology professor at the University of Massachusetts who studies endocrine disruptors, said that there are several examples of how the government has failed to protect the consumer when it comes to environmental chemical exposure. He points to flame retardants and chemicals called PCBs. "We now know we exposed pregnant women and kids to these chemicals, which affected brain development—we have heard this story over and over again," Zoeller told VICE. "The government is using a strategy that hasn't protected people."

Everyone can agree that more research in this area is necessary; the EPA is currently reviewing last year's WHO findings. The real question is, will glyphosate prove to be another notorious environmental chemical that we'll later learn harms human health? And if that's even a possibility, how shall we hedge our bets in the meantime?

Kristin Wartman Lawless is writing her first book, Formerly Known As Food, a critical look at how the industrial food system is changing our minds, bodies, and culture. It will be published by St. Martin's Press. She has written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, andNewsweek, among many other publications. Follow her on Twitter.

Phillip Smith III should never have had a chance to become a creepy teacher.

The former social studies instructor at Huffman High School in Birmingham, Alabama, was arrested in 2014 over charges of sexual contact with a student. Awful though that may be, he probably wasn't the worst teacher-harasser America's ever seen. But the case is drawing intense national attention because Smith had been arrested for domestic abuse, as well as jailed for illegal gun trafficking, years before making the jump into sex crime.

That those offenses failed to trip red flags points towards systemic issues that may be needlessly exposing some Alabama children to volatile characters. At the very least, the crimes are likely to play a key role in a lawsuit filed in December by one of Smith's former students, who claims the teacher solicited sexual favors from her and others in exchange for good grades—and that local officials failed to protect them.

The former teacher's sex crime saga kicked off back in December 2013. That's when, during a history exam, Smith allegedly passed a note to a freshman girl, 14 or 15 at the time, whose desk he moved closer to his own for no obvious reason. The note said the struggling student should come by his room later in the day and pull down her pants so that he could kiss her ass—in exchange for an "A" or "B." Then the teacher apparently asked the girl, "You scared?" suggestively on her way out of the room, at which point the student reported the incident to her mother, who in turn brought it to the school.

The girl stayed out of school for a while after that, but Smith was allowed to keep teaching. When she came back, the girl was changed classes—albeit in a room right next door to her alleged harasser.

Smith only faced real repercussions when a second student came forward in 2014. For that incident, he was officially charged with direct sexual contact with a student under the age of 19, as well as first- and second-degree sodomy, for which he faced up to 20 years in prison. Somehow, though, after being fired and surrendering his teaching license, Smith got off by pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of endangering the health, safety, or welfare of a child, and avoided registration as a sex offender.

Smith even managed a suspended 12-month jail sentence with two years of unsupervised probation—avoiding prison entirely, according to AL.com.

That leniency, coupled with the two-week wait to get Smith out of a classroom, seems pretty bizarre given the information investigators dug up about Smith's history. Birmingham City Schools hired him in 2000 after a criminal background check, but in 2002, he was arrested after yelling at his child's mother, choking her, pushing her down hard enough to cut her knee, and threatening to kill her; he avoided jail by completing an intervention program. Then, in 2004, the feds busted Smith for buying at least 108 guns over the previous four years and selling them illegally for $200 each to an underground dealer, who put them out onto the black market. Smith took leave from his job to serve a nine-month sentence for that crime, to which he pleaded guilty. (Smith apparently failed to notify his employers where he was taking sabbatical.)

When the sentence was done, Smith just returned to work, transferring from his former Birmington-area school to Huffman. Which is what experts seem to agree is the craziest part of the story.

"In most states, if you are doing anything with guns, you're history for being employed in a school," says Nan Stein, a researcher at the Wellesley Centers for Women who's studied sexual assault in K-12 settings.

For their part, Birmingham City Schools officials have said they never knew of these convictions—even though the local Board of Education was reportedly made aware of some of the details of each case in 2003 and 2008, respectively. (VICE reached out to the Birmingham Board of Education and an attorney representing Smith for comment but had yet to hear back as of publication. A spokesperson for the Alabama State Department of Education, meanwhile, previously told a local NBC affiliate that "not all convictions make a person unsuitable to work in an educational environment.")

So while it might be tempting to call negligence here, because Smith was not a dangerous criminal as defined by the state, he was probably technically qualified to teach. Even scarier, according to Stein: The school's two-week wait to take the teacher out of the classroom after the first allegation actually represents a relatively swift response time among cases she's seen.

Stein can't explain why Smith got off with a light sentence in the 2014 case. But she suspects he might have been booted out of the school system before the sexual abuse entirely if Alabama more effectively monitored teachers' criminal history.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

Donald Trump after his victory in the New York primary in April. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)

It's tough to talk about what Donald Trump would want to do as president, because half the time even he doesn't seem to know. He spoke highly of torture and attacking terrorists' families, then "clarified" that he wouldn't order anyone to commit war crimes. He said that if abortion were illegal, women who ended pregnancies should be punished—before everyone got mad at him, and he reversed course. Most recently, he announced that he's more or less abandoning his much-criticized tax plan. But the most confusing topic Trump has waded into lately is the federal deficit.

On Thursday, in an interview with CNBC, the presumptive Republican nominee said things like, "I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal," and suggested the US "can buy back at discounts. You can do things with discounts." What many people took away from this was that Trump was talking about America renegotiating its national debt—convincing the people, businesses, and foreign governments the country has borrowed money from over the years to accept less than what is owed. In the business world, this isn't entirely uncommon. If someone is in danger of defaulting on a loan, or if a business is about to collapse, creditors might want to take want to take whatever they can get to avoid getting nothing. This is more or less what happens in a bankruptcy––something that Trump's put four companies through since 1991.

But loans to the United States government, which come in the form of treasury bonds, or T-bonds, are much safer and consequential investments than casinos or hotels. In fact, T-bonds are considered so foolproof that they're used as the benchmark against which other investments are judged the world over. If those investments suddenly became anything less than super safe, it would be calamitous for the world economy.

Neil Buchanan, a law professor at Georgetown University, has written about why the United States shouldn't pay down its national debt. He says that we should make all principal and interest payments on time, but argues that in a growing economy, it makes sense for debt to increase over time. He calls what Trump wants "insane," joining the chorus of economists and others who piled on Trump in the wake of the CNBC interview.

According to Buchanan, the Treasury would unravel after that policy took hold. No one would lend to the US, except at junk-bond rates. Even if drastic measures successfully reduced the debt, it's unclear who would benefit. Trump hasn't said if the plan is to finance more military spending or tax cuts for the rich. Regardless, interest rates would go through the roof, like they have in countries that have come close to defaulting, such as Cypress and Greece, which would come at a cost to any American who had assets that depending on the Treasury.

"That's not anything like 'the art of a deal,'" Buchanan told me. "It's just theft."

On Monday, presumably responding to the massive outcry from across the political spectrum, Trump amended his comments and called the government's obligations to its debt "absolutely sacred." He said that what he meant (a clarification Trump is often having to make) is that the US should buy back its own debt at a discount if and when the Federal Reserve raises interest rates. He also said that we US would never default, because "you print the money."

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, buying back old debt would mean taking on new debt, which would be subject to those higher interest rates, so it's unclear how that saves money. And printing more money to decrease the deficit—i.e. intentionally ramping up inflation—is also probably a bad idea for all the reasons inflation can be bad.

Normal politicians get dinged all the time for "flip-flopping" on positions—the implication being that they'll say anything in order to get and stay in power and have no deeply held convictions. But with Trump, who called himself the "king of debt" in that original CNBC interview, it's different—a lot of time he's talking about things that he has no experience in, from the specifics of military history to the deficit, and he is obviously improvising plans in interviews without having given the matter much thought. The important thing is that he's going to Make America Great Again, not the specifics of that process.

Mark Weaver, a Republican political consultant in Ohio, says that every remaining candidate has made similarly ignorant or disingenuous comments that betray a lack of economic knowledge. (For example, witness the recent think tank criticism of Bernie Sanders's economic plan.) Someone like Trump, he says, could say basically anything at this point and change his mind as many times as he wants without devastating consequences.

"Donald Trump does a lot of ridiculous things, and for the people who support him, they're willing to give him a pass on ridiculous things because he's different from anyone that Washington has produced in the past fifty years," he told me. "I don't know why this would cause him problems, although it certainly doesn't make sense that you can print more money to fix a deficit."

Though his statements may not hurt his electability, they're doubtless frustrating for those trying to make sense of what Trump would actually do. When the presumptive GOP candidate for president runs his mouth like a guy at a bar explaining his worldview five beers in, what are we supposed to do but take him seriously?

"A president who was determined to be catastrophically irresponsible could order the Treasury Department not to make payments as they come due," says Buchanan, the Georgetown professor. "That would be unconstitutional, but it is possible to do it––just as it would be possible for a president to violate the First Amendment by having the FBI arrest you for doing your job. Trump somehow found a way to turn the craziness up to eleven."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

More than a year after the death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old who suffered a fatal spinal cord injury while in Baltimore police custody, not one of the six cops charged with his death has been successfully tried, much less convicted of a crime. But after a mountain of procedural postponements, the first verdict could come down as soon as next week.

The first city officer to go on trial was William Porter, the cop who checked on Gray while he was caged in a police van on April 12, 2015. Porter was charged with manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, and misconduct in office in a proceeding last December, but when jurors were unable to come to an agreement on any of the charges, the judge declared a mistrial.

Leading up to that first go-around, there was plenty of controversy over whether the trials should even take place within Baltimore proper. The defense argued their clients would not receive fair trials given the highly publicized—and deeply controversial—nature of Gray's death. Still, Judge Barry G. Williams, a black man who once prosecuted police misconduct cases for the feds, wanted to at least try to hold the trials locally, the idea being that it's essential citizens be tried by their peers in America's criminal justice system.

Porter's re-trial is now scheduled for June. Jumping to the front of the pack in his place is Officer Edward Nero, one of the bike patrol cops who initially made eye contact with Gray on the street that day, and ultimately arrested him. Nero's trial starts Thursday for second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, and misconduct charges, but he won't be contending with a jury. Instead, at his own request, the officer is receiving a bench trial—which is to say the only person he has to convince of his innocence is Judge Williams.

There are a handful of reasons a cop might opt for a bench trial over a jury trial, according to David Jaros, a law professor at the University of Baltimore. For starters, it's possible judges are more sympathetic towards cops, given that they regularly work with police and see themselves as part of the same criminal justice system.

The defendant might also prefer a bench trial simply because he thinks the jury won't be fair.

And while some Baltimore denizens might be miffed at the idea of a cop avoiding a regular jury, Jaros says that "at the end of the day, it's important to remember that the rights and interests of defendants come first in our system." If Nero thinks a jury would never give him a fair hearing, then a bench trial—where one judge makes the call—is his legal right.

If nothing else, bench trials tend to be much faster than jury trials; no time has to be spent finding and prepping a jury—America got fresh insight into how crazy this process can be in the recent miniseries The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story. And as Jaros points out, even the mechanics of offering evidence and objecting to which facts merit consideration are simpler in bench trials.

For its part, the prosecution is expected to argue Nero lacked probable cause to arrest and detain Gray in the first place. Indeed, based on legal filings reported by the Baltimore Sun, the prosecution is making the novel case that Nero's conduct was "objectively, criminally unreasonable"—that the initial cuffing was a crime.

The defense can be expected to counter that Nero had reasonable suspicion to arrest the man. Attorneys will likely also point out officers found a knife, which was allegedly clipped to Gray's pants. (The prosecution and defense disagree over whether carrying around this knife was illegal.

Nero could face at least 15 years in prison.

Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore City cop and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, suspects the prosecution's strategy won't work. And if Nero does get convicted, Moskos says, the result would "drastically change policing" because it would suggest "you're not immune from making an honest mistake, a good-faith error."

It's true that American cops generally operate with a great deal of discretion. Which makes most experts deeply skeptical Judge Williams would actually issue a guilty verdict. "The first thing to remember is that even having an officer charged with a crime is rather unusual," Jaros, the law professor, says. "As we saw in Ferguson, and with Eric Garner in Staten Island, there wasn't even an indictment of those officers in the end. It's rare that we even get to this point."

According to Boston College Law Professor Robert Bloom, probable cause is a pretty subjective kind of assessment. "Given that officers are given a great deal of discretion, it really has to be egregious for there to be criminal action," he tells me. While Bloom thinks Nero did not have probable cause to make the arrest, that doesn't mean he will receive criminal sanctions over it.

But is it really fair for cops in the United States to complain about lacking support from the government? While Baltimore State Sttorney Marilyn Mosby received national attention for indicting all six officers last years, Moskos notes another prosecutor could have "just as easily not charged any of the cops."

Some Baltimore residents see things very differently.

Michael Wood, a former city cop turned police reform activist, argues that it's a "fundamental false idea" that the state attorney should back the police. "An officer who believes he's in fear can do anything that a 'reasonable officer' can do, up until, and including, killing someone," he says. "While that might sound okay if an officer is judged by another reasonable officer, what if all the officers are unreasonable?"

Wood adds that it should be civilians who determine the reasonableness of police conduct, not other cops or law enforcement figures. He thinks citizens would still fundamentally side with the cops, but that it could represent a big improvement from the status quo. "You're not going to regulate Wall Street properly with another banker," he says.

The trials come on the heels of one of Baltimore's most violent years. There were 344 homicides in 2015, a per-capita record, and as of Tuesday, there had been 90 homicides so far this year. (During the week of the Baltimore Uprising anniversary last month, there were ten homicides, along with three police-involved shootings, including a fourteen-year-old boy who was shot while holding a BB gun.)

While political momentum for police reform was massive a year ago, today there's mixed sentiment about how far the city has come—and will ultimately go.

Wood thinks real change won't come about until civilians play a more significant and meaningful role in shaping how policing is handled and monitored. "That's the fundamental change that must occur," he tells me. For now, the former cop thinks the police department is basically where it was. "Your big change in criminal justice reform is helping white kids who overdosed in the suburbs."

But reformer Diana Morris, director of the Open Society Institute-Baltimore, is cautiously optimistic. She points to some recent policy changes, like bringing civilians into the trial review board, and limiting the length of time accused officers can wait before speaking with investigators, among others changes. The state legislature recently passed a bill that would prioritize drug treatment over prison, improve parole practices, and end mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.

"But frankly the real for change is going to come out of the DOJ investigation," Morris tells me. The Department of Justice commissioned a federal probe into the Baltimore Police Department last May, and their findings of fact should come out soon. "That will be a very important next step because that serves as the basis that recommendations or changes that require a consent decree will weigh on," she says.

Some veteran cops like Moskos, however, take a grim view on the future of violence in Baltimore, officer-involved or otherwise.

"You've got police worried about doing their job and being put on jail for it," he says. "Liberals say if crime is going up then police aren't doing their jobs, but those people never admitted that cops mattered before. That's the factual part that people don't agree on. What's the role of police and crime prevention?"

Follow Rachel Cohen on Twitter.

This article originally appeared in VICE UK.

YouTube is probably the greatest anthropological project ever launched. It has managed to expose the multitudes of the human condition more than any other medium ever created, and allowed people to express themselves in more diverse ways than at any point in history. This weekly column is an outlet for me to share with you some undiscovered gems, as well some very well-trodden gems, and discuss just what it is that makes the chosen accounts so intriguing.

WHO: Cigar Obsession.
WHAT: A man reviews, gives tips on, but mostly enjoys cigars.
HOW MANY SUBSCRIBERS AT TIME OF WRITING: 57,038.
WHY SHOULD I CARE: I feel like the vibes in this column thus far have been decidedly un-chill. It's been all roller coasters, competitive eating, doom metal, car accidents, spicy food, vegan bodybuilders, murders, video games, shit like that. I feel like this column needs a bit of a sit down, a bit of a break. Not an actual break – I'm still going to do it – just more of a can of Coke and a fag kind of break. Or maybe... a can of coke and a cigar?

Bryan Glynn is a man from Florida who has been making videos for about seven years. He is the proprietor of a website called Cigar Obsession, which is also the name of the 50,000+ subscriber channel he runs. Bryan is a very chill guy.

I would never move to America, but the one thing that tempts me about it is having a giant house with a giant garden in the middle of nowhere that I can just sit in, in silence. Listen to crickets, look at the stars, drink myself into an early grave, that sort of thing. This is the sort of live I envisage Bryan leading, with his tiki-style flame torches in the background of his videos, as he softly describes why a certain cigar is so expensive.

When I was a child I stayed at a hotel in Europe where there were two dickheads smoking cigars near an open fire. It made me think cigars were lame. It was only when I grew up and started routinely giving myself cancer that I realised cigars are kinda cool. They smell nice, nicer than cigarettes. Cigarettes can make most people look cool, whereas cigars require an inherent panache. But in Bryan Glynn's case, the cigars just complement his already extremely friendly face and manner.

I don't want to get too weird with it, but I could watch Bryan Glynn smoke cigars, and talk about smoking cigars, all fucking day. There is something very trustworthy about his mellow blue eyes, soft-edged face, clear-rimmed glasses and soothing, teacher-like voice. Good teacher, too, not dickhead teacher who loses the room and goes "UMM!" and "UHH! EXCUSE ME!" a lot. The sort of teacher who lets you use swear words a couple of times a year, with only a wink for punishment.

If nothing else, YouTube is a place of learning, and channels like this open you up to great new experiences. Did I know where you're supposed to cut the cigar? I didn't. Did I know there's, like, five different ways to wrap the things? Or how to light it? Do I really need to know any of this shit? Not really, but I like knowing it. Knowing it makes me feel slightly fulfilled. And being told it by a calm, kindly man gives me the sensation of meeting a fascinating stranger in a bar, something that has literally never happened to me and I doubt ever will.

This is because real life people are rubbish. Some people probably think Bryan Glynn is lame in real life: boring, weird, the "boring weird cigar guy", or something. But here on YouTube he's a smoking sensei, a puffing professor of quality cigars, and I enjoy learning from his ashy textbooks. I'd like to sit cross legged on the shag carpet of his infinite knowledge, and listen while he softly tells me why a $750 cigar kind of sucks and isn't that great.

People reviewing shit you don't care about is great because you have nothing invested in it. If you buy a £1,000 lawnmower and some internet man tells you it's shit you're going to blow a gasket. Here, you can just sit back while Bryan Glynn blows expensive smoke all over your face. Bliss.

@joe_bish

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All photos by Jake Kivanc

If the expressway had not been virtually deserted,things could have happened very differently for Toronto police Constable Enis Egeli and anyone else on the road.

Sadiq Kahn waves as he arrives at city hall on his first day as mayor. Photo by Jonathan Brady / PA Wire

The election of Sadiq Khan to city hall was for London as much a moment of relief as it was cause to celebrate. Boris Johnson has gone away to plot either his own downfall or the nation's, and this season's most hated man in politics, Zac Goldsmith, didn't replace him.

Beyond the collective sigh of relief, though, there has been real jubilation that Khan's election makes him the first ever non-white mayor of London, and the first Muslim to hold such a position in any major Western city. That victory is made even sweeter given he beat the racist, divisive campaign waged against him by Goldsmith and the Conservative Party.

Even Donald Trump can barely contain his excitement, promising that Sadiq Khan would be an exception to his ban on Muslims entering the US. Thankfully, London's new mayor is less than charmed by Trump's warm invitation and has pointed out that with his own election, "London has proved wrong."

In a contest reminiscent of "Britain's most racist election"—the 1964 general election where the Conservative Peter Griffith's slogan was "If you want a nigger for a neighbor, vote Labour"—Khan faced accusations linking him to extremism, had his Pakistani background used to sew discord between him and people from other South Asian communities, and was labeled a security threat. Four days before polling stations opened, The Daily Mail used an image of the number 30 bus blown apart in Tavistock Square during the 7/7 attacks to illustrate a plea from Zac Goldsmith to vote for him.

Many were just pleased to see, with Khan's election, that such gross tactics don't work—at least not in London.

But now that he's in office, there is a lot to prove. Not only because the London mayoralty is a tough gig, but also because it isn't enough to be London's first mayor from an ethnic minority if your policies don't stand behind those communities, too.

Khan's manifesto was "A Manifesto for All Londoners," a promise of an inclusive approach to improving London. But unfortunately, it reads like pretty standard Labour Party policy—stuck between wanting to support those hit hardest by inequalities, but often finding itself egging on precisely those responsible for the problems facing London's mass of poorly paid, housed, cared for, and policed communities.

He wants to help solve the housing crisis, but still wants to be the most business friendly mayor. He wants to make London safer, but is an uncritical friend of the police. While a manifesto can profess to be "for all," you can tell something's not right if it hasn't concentrated on the specific things affecting different sectors. When it comes to race, Khan's manifesto does seem to suffer from that. So what can he actually do to turn his representation of BME people into existing support for them?

Firstly, the sort of Islamophobia that Khan himself experienced during the election campaign is an everyday concern for all Muslims living in London. That is further compounded by the state-sanctioned racial profiling and surveillance policy of "Prevent." This leaves many unable to trust services they should otherwise feel safe engaging with. Schools, hospitals, and universities have become spaces where pastoral care has taken on a sinister side when it comes to how Muslims are viewed.

Just as the Greater London Council that preceded the assembly was once a springboard for opposition to central government, especially around the question of racism, Khan's mayoralty could lead the way in disrupting the smooth running of Prevent. City hall could develop its own policy: one that focuses on the well-being and welfare of young BME people facing disproportionate rates of hate crime and the mental distress that goes along with that. That way, London would be able to undercut Prevent's discriminatory agenda and turn it into something far more useful.

Looking out for London's BME population will take a lot more than trying to disrupt state-sanctioned racism. Inequalities embedded in our economy mean that many are facing a battle just to survive on a daily basis. In 2014, the Runnymede Trust showed that in three London boroughs, black and Asian Britons were most likely to suffer homelessness and overcrowded housing. Solving the housing crisis in London will be one of the key factors for alleviating racial inequality in the city.

In his manifesto, Khan promises to develop new homes at truly affordable prices, in contrast to his predecessor. But ending this crisis requires a whole new relationship with London's landlords. Their power over tenants has to be swiftly curtailed or for all the well-meaning new-builds at affordable prices, there'll be little by way of lasting impact on poor Londoners' ability to stay housed.

Related: Watch 'How American Men Are Redefining Masculinity'

Sadiq Khan now finds himself in charge of the UK's biggest and most notorious police force. Thankfully, his manifesto has already promised to sell Boris Johnson's wasted water cannon, but what will he be doing to improve the huge problem of racist policing that BME people in London are subject to?

Before entering politics, Khan was a lawyer known for his actions against the police, so there are no excuses—he knows where the problems of policing lie. However, he perpetuates the myth that stop and search is worth keeping around. In London, black people are three times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white counterparts. At this point, it is such a blunt and racist tool that Sadiq Khan could do much worse than suggest the Met abandon it altogether. London could once again show that where state powers are racist, they can be done away with and things won't completely fall apart.

London is celebrated as a multicultural city that supposedly defies the idea that people from different backgrounds can't get along in close quarters. In a sense, that's true, but this picture often covers up a lot of the racism that is present. It can also serve as a convenient whitewash for those in power who happily ignore the racial inequality and racism that they are responsible for.

While Sadiq Khan's legacy will be celebrated as a triumph over base Islamophobia, he needs to act decisively if black, Asian, and other minority ethnic Londoners are to reap any of the benefits of his personal victory against racism.

Follow Wail Qasim on Twitter.

Image via Canadian Space Agency

Over the past couple of days, the internet has been captivated by a truly remarkable story: a plucky 15-year-old Quebec kid, using only his imagination, star charts, and some fancy satellite imagery, had found a lost Mayan city somewhere deep below the canopy of the Belize jungle.

Bassem Youssef is one of the most famous men on the planet, with 7 million followers on Twitter, but at dinner parties in the US, it's only when you say, the "Egyptian Jon Stewart" that there is a look of recognition.

Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth argues that the dehumanization of people is a form of colonialism. In the American media, the dehumanization comes in the form of demonizing people, which is why the only Middle Eastern men that you can probably name are those America has wanted to topple or murder. The good guys remain nameless. Which creates a problem when it comes to men like 42-year-old Bassem Youssef, a.k.a. the Jon Stewart of Egypt. Youssef only became a bona fide good guy in the West, when he was made relatable, and the only way the American media knew how to do that was to Americanize him.

Enter Daily Show producer Sara Taksler. Her documentary Tickling Giants, which premiered last month at the Tribeca Film Festival, seeks to show how Youssef is so much more than an Egyptian Jon Stewart. The engaging film brings viewers along for Youssef's unlikely journey from a heart surgeon, tending to the wounded at Tahrir Square during the 2011 Egyptian revolution, to an international celebrity, speaking truth to power, one joke at a time.

It was Youssef's friend who initially suggested that the surgeon post satirical videos of the Arab Spring on YouTube. After decades of a dictator controlling the media with an iron fist, it was the first time that someone so brazenly questioned the authority of President Mubarak. He said the things that the populace thought, but dared not say, and he did so with a comedic twinkle in his blue eyes.

Within weeks, offers of fronting a TV show came flooding in, and the doctor was faced with the dilemma of whether to continue serving the public in hospitals, or to embark on a career as a full-time comedian. He chose the latter. Soon his show—titled Al-Bernameg, or The Show in English—was poking fun at the Muslim Brotherhood and its leader Mohamed Morsi, who had won the first free elections in Egypt in 2012. He lampooned Morsi's attempts at speaking English and the bending of the rule of law.

Youssef's popularity led him to being invited onto Stewart's The Daily Show in June 2012, where he met Taksler for the first time. "I was impressed that they were doing something like I do, but with higher stakes," she told me. "I'm somebody who processes life, politics, and the world through humor, and it was hard for me to imagine the people that I knew and work with, being penalized for making jokes. I was just in awe of what Bassem and his team were doing."

But Tickling Giants was a story that was destined to take on a dark turn. Youssef became an internationally renowned figure in April 2013, after an arrest warrant was issued following accusations that he had insulted Morsi and the Islamic faith. The final straw came when Youssef mocked Morsi's use of English when he garbled the message to not drink and drive as "gas and alcohol don't mix." The charges were eventually dropped, but the plug was pulled on Al Bernameg twice, as first Egyptian broadcaster CBC and then the Saudi-owned MBC Masr bowed down to threats made by the authorities.

Eventually Youssef and his production company found themselves fined over $1 million for mocking the military. For Youssef, this was the final straw, and he decided to flee for San Jose, California. Earlier this year, it was reported that this fine had been annulled. I recently caught up with Youssef in New York City. We spoke about the film and how it was inspiring his new speaking tour and life in exile.

VICE: Was agreeing to star in the documentary your way of continuing to fight for democracy in Egypt?
Bassem Youssef: Let me ask you a question: Would you say no if someone says that they want to make a documentary about you? How many people get that offer? So Sara says, "I want to make a documentary about you," and I say, "OK!" But you also have to understand, at that time in 2012, no one could see the future. We were in a good place. As a matter of fact, I said, "It might be a bit boring, but yeah come along." Maybe the pinnacle will be Jon Stewart coming to my show, or me going onto his show again, that's it. Nobody imagined that my show would be so influential, that the stakes would be that high, or that the risks would change.

You started by making a YouTube show. Did you imagine it would be so successful? You're a doctor, what made you think that you could do political commentary?
I didn't see myself as a star or anything. I was a normal kid. I was a nerd, basically. My friend Tariq, who I had known for about seven years at that time, came to me. He thought whenever I would be in a setting that I would bring people together, and they would listen to me.

Why was that?
I can say I was a charismatic person. I was a man of the people. I was social. People would talk to me, I would talk to people, but so is maybe half of the population of Earth. I don't think there was anything special about me when I started.

Were you a natural in front of the camera?
Well, when actually I saw the first episodes of myself on YouTube, I could not even stand watching myself for even thirty seconds. Like anything, if you watch anybody when they started their show and see them a few years later, of course it changed. There was a development, an improvement, and an investment.

When was the moment that you knew it could be something bigger?
When I first got my TV deal. That was two months after I started on YouTube. It went very fast, and then the first season was just in a small studio. Then I thought, I want to do this as a live show. I want to do this as Jon Stewart-style, live audience—everything. Everybody laughed at me at that time.

Is there a connection between being a surgeon and being a comedian?
There is a hypothetical connection, which I didn't think about until I read about it. Sarcasm in Greek means to cut through layers, so it is basically the same.

What made you want to go to Tahrir Square?
Everyone went to Tahrir Square to see what the hell was happening. If you are not part of the demonstration, you went a day later. We saw that on TV, and we wanted to see what was happening. Then as a doctor, I went there when we saw the attack on the square. I was with other colleagues in the hospital, and we decided to take our supplies and just go to the square.

Was that a harrowing experience?
It was a new experience. I mean, we were just caught in the moment, and we were treating people. We were having gunshots and stuff flying over our heads. It was bizarre.

When the show made you famous, in the documentary you say fame gave you fear, can you explain that?
Yeah, because this whole thing made me exposed. There was one episode where I said, "I wish I had a different life." It came from the fact that I got myself into something, and I didn't sign for that. I was making jokes, and suddenly everyone wants to get me.

Are you someone who is stubborn?
Maybe persistent—persistent would be a better word to use.

How did you experience life under the regime of President Hosni Mubarak?
I was one of the privileged. We were well-off. We were upper-middle class, what we had seen was not poverty, as much as stagnation and unfairness. Even if it doesn't happen to you directly, you can see it. That's why many of us, even if we were not oppressed, or in jail, or poor, joined the revolution.

Do you think that it was a mistake to get rid of Morsi when Egypt did? Even though he had been running roughshod over the constitution, there was still a chance to see if he would respect democracy and hold another election?
There was no chance. I have to say, what happened was partly to be blamed on so many people. If you start to have a very fundamental, extreme rhetoric and you don't listen, you basically put us into an equation that is us or them. The liberal powers have no power, and there was the army.

Of course, in hindsight, maybe it is a mistake to use the army, but the alternative [to allow Morsi to rewrite the constitution and ban opposition] if they were to cross that line, they would have used the army to do the exact same thing that they are doing now. Because basically it's the lesser of two evils. I don't know which one is the lesser of two evils, because both of them are evil.

How do you feel about the so-called Arab Spring, now that Egypt is again being ruled by a military figure?
It's not a "so-called"—it is an Arab Spring. It is a beginning, and democracy takes time. It is the beginning of something else, and I know that it looks chaotic right now, but it will take time, but it has to start somewhere.

You have this life in America now, but it comes from a position of sadness? How do you feel about your show now?
You know, it's up and down. We tried to do something. Thank God we did the series. It was taken away from us. But they want a castrated humor, and you have the chance to start all over again. As I said in the movie, I chose to respect the program and to be truthful to the message and leave.

It's not a 'so-called' —it is an Arab Spring, it is a beginning, and democracy takes time.

You're now working on a new show for Fusion TV on YouTube. This time it's about America politics viewed from a Middle Eastern perspective. Is that because you feel that living in exile, you can no longer comment on daily life in Egypt?
I do comment on my social media, but the fact that to do a show on Egypt, about Egypt, from outside the country, I said at the moment, "No, I can't do that. It would be like being outside and throwing rocks."

When I comment on social media, this is my personal opinion, but to have a production is a totally different story. It would take a lot of commitment to do it from the outside and be about the Middle East.

You also are engaged in speaking tours, and have just done a show in London, New York, and Los Angeles. Where do you see that going?
The idea is that I want to develop my story into a theatrical story. It's like Tickling Giants, but it's not like the movie. Basically I'm showing how the media manipulates the people, how the Islamic media, the military media, and the liberal media are all the same and using exactly the same narrative. I do this comparison between them. So instead of making it a rigid thought, it's more interactive. It's keynotes and presentations and videos. At the moment, it's very basic, and I'm sure when the book comes, it will have more ideas.

Follow Kaleem Aftab on Twitter.

Bassem Youssef is making a web series The Democracy Handbook for Fusion. He is also at work on a book, also titled Tickling Giants, to be published in 2017.

In 2013, we spoke to photographer Dan Giannopolous about taking photos of discarded drug baggies. He'd just started snapping the ziplock bags he found lying around near his house and mapping their coordinates to see if he could find any recognizable patterns. Three years later: nope, no recognizable patterns. But lots and lots of photos of empty baggies.

"In terms of patterns, nothing really showed up," he says over the phone. "It just showed that there are a lot of litter bugs. A lot of drug users who like to litter."

I suppose that makes sense; these bags are available online, meaning dealers from all over buy them in bulk, so you're probably not going to see any designs local to one specific area.

Plus, weed dealers—and the vast majority of the baggies Giannopolous photographed contained weed ("I've got a lot of friends who had the same bags, and they're all fucking potheads")—aren't that bothered about branding. Selling weed isn't like selling heroin—where dealers stamp the wraps with their own personal brand—or pills, which are often stamped with a recognizable design. Unless you're the type to import ludicrously expensive, name-brand weed from America, it's likely you don't care too much about what design is on the packaging it comes in.

Giannopolous did notice some changes over the years, though. "Toward the beginning, I saw a lot of Bruce Lee , but there were new ones, too—the biohazard one, different types of smiley faces."

Often finding the bags in the typical places people go to get stoned—parks, bus stops, those quiet paths that are full of smashed glass and loose children's shoes, despite the fact you never see anybody walk down them—Giannopolous realized that there wasn't much use in trying to force any kind of data out of them, so he just decided to focus on the aesthetics. "To me, they're just really cool little bits of street art, which I thought would look cool if they were photographed and blown up," he says.

So he's done just that, ready to exhibit the project—which he's called WASTE(D)—at the Ben Oakley Gallery in London this June. Weirdly, the number of baggies he'll have on display ended up "completely unintentionally" being a very suitable amount.

"I reached a point with the digital collage I was making where I needed to get it printed. I stopped and thought, That's it—I'm not going to do it anymore," he says. "And it just happened to be on four hundred twenty baggies."

WASTE(D)opens at the Ben Oakley Gallery, Greenwich on June 10.

Follow Dan Giannopoulos onInstagram.

See more images from "WASTE(D)" below.

Photo by Kathryn Scott Osler/The Denver Post via Getty Images

In a case with potentially massive implications for the legal weed industry, a new lawsuit alleges pot edibles were responsible for the death of a Colorado woman shot by her husband. While several incidents involving THC intoxication have had tragic consequences since legalization went into effect in the state two years ago, this is probably the first case to allege the manufacturers bear direct responsibility, as the Denver Post reports.

On April 14, 2014, Kristine Kirk, 44, called 911 out of fear for herself and her sons. Her husband, Richard, appeared to be having a psychotic episode, jumping in and out of first-floor windows and claiming the world was ending. Minutes later, a single bullet left Kristine dead, and her children—now 9, 13, and 15—alone, struggling to pick up the pieces.

The lawsuit, brought on behalf of the children by their grandparents Wayne and Marti Kohnke (and their aunt Tamara Heman), claims that not only did the candy Richard Kirk ate drove him to commit the heinous act, but that he was never made aware of the dangers of ingesting the pot-infused treat. "Edibles themselves are not the evil," attorneys Greg Gold and David Olivas said in a statement released to media. "It is the failure to warn, the failure to properly dose, the failure to tell the consumer how to safely use edibles that is the evil."

For their part, the defense is predictably dubious about tracing the actions of a killer back to the companies behind a pot candy.

"I'm looking at the actual label right now, and it does say there may be health risks associated with the consumption of this product," says attorney Sean McAllister, who represents Gaia's Garden, manufacturer of the edible in question and one of two defendants named in the suit. (The other is Nutritional Elements, the store that sold it to Kirk.) McAllister believes the case will ultimately come down to product liability law, but also plans to raise questions about the killer's mindset at the time.

"A defendant's voluntary intoxication is not a defense to a crime," McAllister continues in our phone interview. "So if a guy goes out, gets drunk, and steals a car, you don't get to say, 'I'm not liable for stealing a car because I was drunk.'" The attorney also says there was nothing defective about the product, with most reasonable adults understanding that consuming marijuana will result in intoxication. (Kirk changed his defense to not guilty by reason of insanity last September, and was reportedly set to undergo a mental health evaluation at the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo before trial.)

Experts within the recreational pot community, however, are concerned the legal action could have a serious impact on the nascent industry, even if it's defeated. Jamie Lewis, founder and CEO of Mountain Medicine, has worked with state regulators in the past and portends a contentious upcoming legislative session. "We'll likely have to spend more money on forced regulations mandated by the state," she tells me. "Legislators will come in with these inflammatory articles about one or two very tragic incidents, but still just one or two compared to the volume that dispensaries sell."

As chair of the Cannabis Business Alliance, Lewis was one of the champions of the "Start low. Go slow." campaign that aimed to bring consumers up to speed about the potential dangers of overconsumption. He says 250,000 pamphlets were distributed covering topics such as recommended dosage and how to properly store them in the wake of a rash of negative incidents, such as a 19-year-old Congalese exchange student leaping to his death from a hotel balcony in 2014.

"We'll probably end up having to spend money on different packaging requirements or labeling when that money really should be going to education," Lewis adds. "Right now, I need to figure out where I stand with liability insurance."

Debate has raged at the state capitol over edible marijuana products for years. In addition to a longstanding 100mg limits limit on THC (the psychoactive compound in cannabis) in a single package, lawmakers have imposed new serving size rules, as well as packaging requirements aimed at preventing use by children. In April, House Bill 1436 was introduced to ban candies in the shape of animals or fruits, drawing the ire of many in the industry. Very few of these efforts, industry insiders argue, are practical with both medical and recreational marijuana becoming more popular nationwide.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there were a conservative state down the road that strongly considered a ban on edibles," says Kayvan Khalatbari, founding partner of Denver Relief Consulting, a firm that advises cannabis businesses in nine states and Canada. "But in medical states, it's these edibles that are preferred over smoking or concentrates, so something has to give."

As medical marijuana continues to spread—it is now law in 24 states and the District of Columbia—some states have banned the sale of smoked marijuana entirely. In New York, for instance, only vaporized cannabis or capsules are legal for consumers, leaving patients with edible marijuana as one of their two choices. "I can certainly see more restrictions being placed on such as having each individual dose individually packaged and egregious warning labels, says Khalatbari, "which I think will prove to be rather unnecessary as cannabis establishes itself in mainstream society and education becomes more widespread."

Still, tales of hallucinations and psychosis triggered by edibles may set back those education campaigns—and some entrepreneurs' bottom lines—suggesting as they do that in the wrong hands, marijuana can be quite dangerous.

In some cases, you can expect to hear in the months ahead, it's practically murderous.

Jake Browne is a freelance contributor to the Cannabist and former managing editor of CULTURE Magazine. Follow him on Twitter.

Donald Trump meets 'Shenmue' villain Lan Di, image via the Shenmue 500K Facebook group / Twitter user Rick Tyler

There's something about the SEGA Dreamcast that seems like it was always destined to be a beautiful failure. Ahead of its time in online play, yet lumbered with a sluggish, unusable modem. Littered with wonderfully innovate titles like Jet Set Radio and Space Channel 5, yet without EA Sports support (so no FIFA games). And no other release summed up everything both great and terrible about the console better than 1999's Shenmue, the revolutionary open world revenge saga that became both a cult favorite and one of gaming's biggest commercial flops.

A few weeks ago, an old friend of mine (with whom I spent many hours playing Power Stone when we should have been studying), added me to the Facebook group for the fan site Shenmue 500K. Now, the fact that there's a group of dedicated fans of an old video game on the internet is hardly shocking, but the tone of the Shenmue fans on 500K is so weird. It's fair to say that gamers have a bit of a historical image problem. Rightly or wrongly, they're painted as angry adolescents, likely to get verbally violent over a bad review score. But Shenmue fans seem to be a world away from that.

The people in this group just seem so naive and adorable in adoration of their favorite SEGA game, and its sequel of 2001. They make really lame Shenmue memes of The Simpsons or Donald Trump, like something your aunt would share, only if she really loved Shenmue. Like, here's the Shenmue bad guy Lan Di photoshopped next to Trump, because Trump is kind of horrible, geddit?

Elsewhere, there's a guy who's been so inspired by Shenmue's "iconic" forklift bits that he now likes to collect screenshots of other forklifts in other video games. Or how about a custom Shenmue marriage certificate? You can't just buy that kind of classiness in any high-street store.

Because who doesn't want their own 'Shenmue'-branded marriage certificate? Again, photo via Shenmue 500K.

I'm sure the successful Shenmue III Kickstarter, which raised over six million dollars towards the development of a third game, has increased activity in 500K, but mostly it's a group of excited people going: "You know what's amazing? Shenmue is amazing!" And then everyone agrees, occasionally in meme form. I sound like I'm mocking, but I'm really not. There's such sincerity, such genuine, unironic love. It's great.

And how far does that love go? Very far for young British musician Andy Hughes, who posted that he's writing an entire goddamn rock opera based on the plot of the first game, entitled The Samurai Boy Saga: 1986. He tells me over email that his obsession began when he got the game for Christmas, when he was just nine years old.

"I fell in love with it instantly. At the time I'd never discovered a game like it. I was in total awe with the in-depth virtual reality; it was like a second life in Japan to me. Since the first day I played it, I've been obsessed ever since then."

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Related: Watch 'Tracing the History of Pinball from Illegal Gambling to Mac Demarco'

Inspired by the Who and 1970s prog rock, it's Hughes's first stab at a rock opera. "When I was around 14, I had an idea for a 'Shenmue: The Musical,' but considering my musical ability at the time, and the theme itself just seemed tedious and cheesy, I quickly canned the project. But one night earlier this year, I had a brainstorm telling myself that I need to create a concept album."

"Initially I was going to conceive my own fictional story, but being a huge fan of Shenmue and all the excitement of Shenmue III becoming a reality, I gathered it would be a great idea to take the subject matter from the first game and write songs based on the essential and important cutscenes in the game."

The cover of Andy Hughes's 'Shenmue' album

The tracks Hughes has recorded so far sound like typically searing 70s rock, and strangely, a bit like Generation Terrorists-era Manic Street Preachers (only if James Dean Bradfield had been singing about revenge and small town life in 1980s Japan). The song "The Day the Snow Turned to Rain" opens with the lyrics: "In 1986 in Yokosuka, Japan / There once stood a man / He was a master of Jujitsu / Though he always knew / They'd be on their way someday." Later, "The Amulet of Acquiesce" is a love song about protagonist Ryo and love interest Nozomi, which Hughes says is "in the style of Meat Loaf, meets Journey."

Production of 'Shenmue III' was officially confirmed at E3 2015, during Sony's presentation. The game is expected to come out in December 2017, for PC and PlayStation 4

Thinking about it, if any game was likely to inspire a prog-rock concept album, it would be Shenmue. It was a revolutionary, important game. Yet it was also strangely terrible in its own way. How I always describe it to non-Dreamcast acolytes is that it was a genre-changing sandbox game that preceded Grand Theft Auto III, and that it was the first ever 3D open world where you could go everywhere and talk to everyone. But whereas the GTA games let you live out your dreams of being Tony Montana, Shenmue had you play as a meek teenager in Japan in 1986. Oh, and you have to get a part time job, and you have to be home before dark.

I can hear you say, "That doesn't sound very fun." And you're right, and that's why it flopped, with sales falling well short of the number necessary to cover its legendary costs (it was the most expensive game ever made, at the time of its release). But it was ahead of its time, not just in its gameplay, but also in its attempt to have video games tackle to the low-key moments of real life, that modern day indie games would later explore (its small-town setting is not dissimilar to Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, for instance). But indie games are generally small passion projects with shortened runtimes; not epic, triple-A flagship titles like Shenmue. It became gaming's very own Heaven's Gate or Waterworld, a nonsensical folly that makes you question how it ever got made.

A trailer for the original 'Shenmue,' from 2000.

It was complete self-indulgence from director Yu Sukuzi, the Sega pioneer behind arcade classics like Hang-On, Space Harrier, and Virtua Fighter—if Out Run was his "My Generation," Shenmue III is setting itself up to be his version of Pete Townsend's unfinished sci-fi epic Lifehouse. Shenmue is very like prog-rock in the way that it's so very uncool, yet completely sincere and earnest. You really have to give yourself over to it to get something, anything out of it. But when you do, you can grow to really love it.

"Shenmue also got me interested in Japanese culture and martial art films," Hughes says. "And a couple of years ago I wrote a song called 'Flight To Tokyo' which was based on a dream I had about having a romantic holiday over there." And if a game does that to you, you can easily forgive a few wonky Quick Time Event sections.

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Former CBC host Jian Ghomeshi arrives at court in Toronto on Wednesday, May 11. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mark Blinch

But Wednesday, for the first time throughout this entire legal ordeal, Ghomeshi, 48, directly addressed the allegations against him in an apology to Kathryn Borel, his former CBC colleague whose complaint was to be subject of a sexual assault trial next month. Because he apologized and signed a peace bond ordering him to stay away from Borel for a year and not possess weapons, the Crown prosecutor withdrew the sexual assault charge, ensuring Ghomeshi won't receive a criminal record.

"I want to apologize to Ms. Borel for my behaviour towards her in the workplace," Ghomeshi said aloud in court. "In the last 18 months I have spent a great deal of time reflecting on this incident and the difficulties I caused Ms. Borel, and I've had to come to terms with my own deep regret and embarrassment."

Ghomeshi also said he had a position of "privilege" as the host of Q and that his behaviour was "sexually inappropriate." A letter from Ghomeshi's therapist detailing the extent of the psychotherapy he's undergone in the last 18 months was also submitted to court.

Outside the courthouse, Borel told dozens of reporters she thought a peace bond with an apology "seemed like the clearest path to the truth."

She then gave troubling details about the nature of her relationship with Ghomeshi while she worked at CBC from 2007-2010 as a producer on Q, the radio show Ghomeshi hosted at the time he was fired.

She alleged that in February 2008, he came up behind her at work and "rammed his pelvis against my backside over and over, simulating sexual intercourse." While that incident sparked the sex assault charge, Borel said Ghomeshi humiliated her daily with verbal and emotional assaults, and on at least three occasions, physically touched her.

"Mr. Ghomeshi made it clear to me that he could do what he wanted to me and my body. He made it clear that he could humiliate me repeatedly and walk away with impunity," she said.

Borel said no action was taken when she went to the CBC for help, largely because of his status there.

"What I received in return was a directive that yes, he could do this, and yes, it was my job to let him. The relentless message to me, from my celebrity boss and from the national institution we worked for was that his whims were more important than my humanity or my dignity," she said.

Up until Borel spoke to police in December 2014, Borel said she didn't realize what had happened to her was considered sexual assault; she said she'd come to believe she deserved his behaviour.

"That is what Jian Ghomeshi just apologized for: the crime of sexual assault. This is a story of a man who had immense power over me and my livelihood, admitting that he chronically abused his power and violated me in ways that violate the law," she said.

A protester holds a sign after former CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi arrived at court on May 11. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mark Blinch

Borel said her claims have been corroborated by witnesses and reports. Another former CBC producer, Roberto Veri, has publicly said he witnessed the pelvic thrusting incident while an inquiry into CBC workplace culture found Ghomeshi created a hostile work environment that was condoned by management.

She finished her statement by saying in a perfect world, men like Ghomeshi would be convicted of the crimes they committed, but she believed a trial would only have "maintained his lie." His apology, she noted, didn't extend to the more than 20 women who came forward and accused him of punching, choking, and slapping them.

"Mr. Ghomeshi hasn't met any of their allegations head on, as he vowed to do in his Facebook post from 2014. He hasn't taken the stand on any charge. All he's said about his other accusers is that they're all lying and that he's not guilty. And remember: that's what he said about me," Borel said.

Ghomeshi's lawyer Marie Henein told the court she's never "had a client be the subject of such an unrelenting public scrutiny and focus." The last 18 months for Ghomeshi have been the most difficult she's ever had to witness someone withstand, she said, adding that by apologizing, Ghomeshi has "done everything the Crown and courts have asked him to do."

"It is my sincerest hope that with the conclusion of this proceeding, Mr. Ghomeshi can move forward. On a personal level, it is my equally sincere hope that the Canadian public can now move forward."

Ghomeshi did not take the witness stand during his February sex assault trial involving three additional complainants. He was later acquitted of four counts of sexual assault and one count of overcome resistance by choking, with Justice William Horkins citing issues about credibility and reliability of the witnesses in his judgment.

Reached by email, one of them, Linda Redgrave, who accused Ghomeshi of pulling her hair and punching her in the head over two separate occasions, told VICE the peace bond resolution "saddens me to no end"

"This woman will not get her day in court, will not be able to at least try to get justice from this man and it sends a message to others that it's just not worth the effort to report if the case is not taken seriously," she said.

She also said Ghomeshi's apology was not done out of sincerity, but "to avoid jail time."

"Still, I would like him to apologize to me, Lucy and witness number 3 and all the other women he has hurt who have been too fearful of our unjust system to come forward."

When the Ghomeshi allegations first broke, as a result of a Toronto Star investigation, many were hopeful it would become a watershed moment for survivors of sexual assault. Hashtags like #WeBelieveSurvivors, #BeenRapedNeverReported, and #IBelieveLucy took off, sparking countless discussions about violence against women and barriers against reporting these incidents to authorities.

But Redgrave, who has started www.comingforward.ca to help sex assault complainants navigate legal waters, said Ghomeshi's trial only highlighted an unfair criminal justice system.

"Judges should specialize in sexual assault cases and have clear understanding about how victims act and react and how memory and trauma play out," she said.

Anu Dugal, director of violence prevention at the Canadian Women's Foundation, told VICE the Ghomeshi case made it "brutally clear" the survivor is not represented in the legal process. Dugal pointed to Horkins' judgment, in which he accused all three women of lying and questioned their post-assault behaviour, as evidence that witnesses are revictimized during trial.

However, a recent Canadian Women's Foundation survey showed two out of three Canadians believe sexual assault claims are true, which Dugal said is an encouraging stat.

"In spite of a not guilty verdict, women are still being believed," she said.

"There are certainly disappointments about this case as a watershed moment there are plenty of questions out there that are begging for answers that have to be addressed."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.