A bad year for weed stocks is a good year for outside investors who haven’t lost money on the market’s decline, said the lawyer who counseled music mogul and entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs through the regulatory challenges of his latest business venture: cannabis.

On Nov. 4, the Wall Street Journal reported Diddy and his company, Combs Enterprises, have agreed to purchase nine retail cannabis stores and three production facilities in Illinois, New York and Massachusetts for a total of $185 million, laying the groundwork for the first vertically integrated, minority-owned, multi-state cannabis operator in the country.