Driver of Tesla on autopilot gets probation for crash that killed 2 in Gardena

• June 30, 2023

A 28-year-old man who was behind the wheel of a Tesla Model S on autopilot in 2019 when it ran a red light in Gardena and slammed into a car, killing two people, authorities said, has been sentenced to two years of probation after pleading no contest to two counts of vehicular manslaughter.

But should Kevin George Aziz Riad violate his probation, a judge could sentence him to four years in state prison, said Tatevik Tigranyan, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

Riad entered the no contest pleas on June 22 and was immediately sentenced, according to court records. In addition to probation, he must also complete 31 days of work for Caltrans or another approved group, 100 hours of community service, 90 days of house arrest and a hospital and morgue program, Tigranyan said.

The case was believed to be the first felony prosecution filed in the U.S. against a driver using widely available partial-autopilot technology.

Riad was driving west on Artesia Boulevard on Dec. 29, 2019, when the car ran a red light at Vermont Avenue and slammed into a Honda Civic while traveling 74 mph, prosecutors said during a March 2022 preliminary hearing.

Killed in the crash were Gilberto Alcazar Lopez, 40, of Rancho Dominguez and Maria Guadalupe Nieves-Lopez, 39, of Lynwood. The two were on their first date, relatives said following the hearing, when a judge ruled enough evidence existed to order Riad to stand trial.

Riad and his girlfriend, who was in the car with him, were hospitalized with minor injuries.

Related links

Driver of Tesla on autopilot in fatal Gardena crash to face trial, judge rules
Felony charges in Gardena collision are 1st in a fatal crash involving Autopilot
2 killed in Gardena crash when speeding Tesla runs red light, police say

At the preliminary hearing, Los Angeles police Officer Alvin Lee testified that numerous traffic signs warn drivers to slow down as they approach the end of the freeway. Riad and his girlfriend were traveling from Orange County and Riad could only recall smoke and deployed airbags before being taken to a hospital.

Crash data from the Tesla showed the car’s steering wheel was kept near center, with sensors indicating Riad’s hand stayed on the steering wheel leading up to and at the point of collision, Tesla engineer Eloy Rubio Blanco testified. No brakes were applied in the six minutes before the crash.

Riad’s attorney, Arthur Barens, argued last year for the charges to be reduced to misdemeanors as any negligence by Riad would have only been assessed a citation had the fatal crash not occurred. The judge disagreed.

On its website, Tesla has stated that anyone using its autopilot should be a “fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment.”

But the system only works if torque sensors in the steering wheel detect that someone is at the wheel, the Tesla engineer said.

Riad, who was a limousine-service driver at the time of the crash, was charged with two counts of vehicular manslaughter in October 2021, nearly two years after the crash. He was out on bail throughout his court proceedings.

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​ Orange County Register 

California students believed loan forgiveness would change lives, but SCOTUS decision leaves them ‘devastated’

• June 30, 2023

Born and raised in Highland Park, Marcos Molina, witnessed the neighborhood’s gentrification and the abusive tactics landlords like his utilized to displace residents.

Charged by this trauma, he chose to study Urban Planning at Cal Poly Pomona so that he could combat the recurring crisis throughout LA County.

“The privilege of receiving financial assistance helped me pay at least my tuition but did not help pay for my housing or costs of living,” he said. “So I had to take on student loans to essentially survive in school.”

By 2013, he graduated with $25,000 in student loan debt, and as the months passed he said he heard no word from the lender company on repayment. After investigating for himself, he learned the company was using an incorrect email to correspond with him, and he was already four payments behind — a whopping $3,000 was demanded up front and $600 every month going forward.

To make matters worse, it also tanked Molina’s credit score and so housing became difficult to secure.

“I was being paid like $35,000 a year so I was like, ‘I’m not going to eat today. I’ll eat tomorrow,’ he said. “It was just survival at that point — I wasn’t living.”

Today, Molina has secured income-based repayment and is slowly working to bring down his balance and recover his credit. Working for a nonprofit and living in Pomona in a friend’s home, he said he is luckier than most who end up in a similar situation.

But the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, June 30, rejected President Joe Biden’s $400 billion plan to cancel or reduce student loans for millions of Americans, throwing a wrench in students’ and graduates’ financial plans.

The forgiveness program would have canceled $10,000 in student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 or households with less than $250,000 in income. Some Pell Grant recipients would have had an additional $10,000 in debt forgiven.

For Richard White, a 2019 UCLA graduate who still has about $10,000 in student loan debt, that means some serious consideration about his living situation.

Estimating his monthly student loan payments to be about $300, White said he was able to move to an apartment on his own (meaning, no roommates) in Long Beach when payments were put on pause during the pandemic. He was able to put more money into his savings and provide upkeep for his car since he drives to work — although, even without the student loan payment, his expenses did not drastically decrease since the cost of living and food and other prices climbed.

“The Supreme Court made its decision, and it is what it is, but I hope our federal government — meaning our president and Congress — can come together and figure this out,” said White. “It was a bold commitment from our government that they would support individuals like myself. There needs to be a bigger push to make sure something happens for individuals like myself.”

“I have to figure out how to limit my expenses elsewhere. It’s going to be somewhat difficult. I may have to change my living situation if I can’t increase my income,” he said.

UC Riverside student Ryan Nguyen is slowly accruing up to $60,000 in student loan debt before he graduates — even with about a third of his tuition covered by unsubsidized Stafford loans. Nguyen, who was recently laid off from a minimum-wage internship and is actively seeking a new job, said he might need further schooling so he can have a career that would more easily help him pay off his student loans.

With the pause in loan payments, Nguyen’s money has been going to rent and other expenses, he said.

For Phoebe San Pedro, a fourth-year psychology student at Cal State Fullerton, dreams like traveling to the Philippines to see her family will have to wait.

By the time she graduates, San Pedro expects to have at least $25,000 in student loan debt. Most of her parents’ investments were used to support her older sister’s schooling at UCI, and she lost some financial aid because she didn’t graduate in four years.

“I’m confident that I can (pay my student loan debt), but it’ll take time and a lot of putting my personal dreams on hold so I can be financially able to make a living and pay off these loans,” she said.

Ethan Huang doesn’t regret attending Caltech, a private university in Pasadena, but the alumnus said it came with a hefty price tag.

“I have loans and seeing the decision this morning, my heart dropped a little because I would have definitely relieved a significant portion of my loans,” said Huang, now a Ph.D. student at Stanford. “It’s devastating, to be honest.”

Others, however, were understanding of the ruling.

“I think that it would be nice for all students to get their loans forgiven,” said USC alumna Arianna Shapiro, now a law student at Loyola Law. “However, I understand why the Supreme Court voted against it because in order to forgive everyone’s debt, you need to raise taxes for everyone in America because that’s the only way to get that money.”

But for some, like Molina and San Pedro, a reduction or cancellation of student loan debt meant they could give back more to their communities.

San Pedro plans to go into a three-year master’s program with financial support from Disney’s Aspire program and hopes to become a culturally competent therapist in her community. “Not everyone can put their financial health on the line like this, but I hope there’s more like me to make the sacrifice for the betterment of our community and all people,” she said.

“In a perfect world, I would have enough money to open spaces to help other people who come from disenfranchised communities,” said Molino. “Getting my loans forgiven so that I could push forward isn’t for selfish greed. I don’t want my loans forgiven because I want to be a millionaire, it’s to at least live happily and help those around us.”

Loan repayments have been on hold since the pandemic, but borrowers are now expected to start payments once again by late summer.

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​ Orange County Register 

The best places to bike in America? Check out the list.

• June 30, 2023

What are the most cyclist-friendly cities in America – where the bike lanes are protected, the intersections safe and greenways stretch distantly into the horizon?

According to a new ranking of 2023’s Best Places to Bike by the Boulder-based advocacy group PeopleForBikes, Minneapolis came in first for most cyclist-amenable major city, followed by San Francisco, out of nearly 1,500 cities in the U.S. For medium-sized cities, Davis in Yolo County — the home of the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame — ranked first, followed by Ankeny, Iowa, and Berkeley.

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The rankings from PeopleForBikes are meant to reflect the quality of a city’s bicycle network. Six factors are taken into calculation: safe speed limits, protected lanes, reallocated space for biking and walking, intersection design, network connections and trusted data. Cities have also received numerical scores, which the group explains thusly:

“Each city receives a City Ratings score on a scale of 0-100. A low score (0-20) indicates a weak bike network, meaning the city lacks safe bikeways or there are gaps in the network. A high score (80-100) indicates that most common destinations are accessible by safe, comfortable bike routes that serve people of all ages and abilities. For larger cities, a score of 50 is the tipping point to becoming a great place to bike.”

Here are the top five best places to bike in 2023 from the large and medium-sized city categories. For the complete list check out the full ranking:

Large cities (population above 300,000)

1. Minneapolis (68 percent score)

2. San Francisco (63 percent score)

3. Seattle (62 percent score)

4. Philadelphia (57 percent score)

5. Portland, Ore. (56 percent score)

Medium cities (population 50,000-300,000)

1. Davis, Calif. (77 percent score)

2. Ankeny, Iowa (74 percent score)

3. Berkeley (72 percent score)

4. Boulder (68 percent score)

5. Corvallis, Ore. (63 percent score)

​ Orange County Register 

‘This is the existential crisis’: A push for climate change education

• June 30, 2023

Alex Brown | (TNS) Stateline.org

When wildfires and smoke swept through Oregon in 2020, Lyra Johnson’s family made plans to evacuate their home near Portland. Johnson, then 14, was told she might have to quickly learn to drive — despite not having a license — in order to get her grandmother to safety.

Thankfully, the danger passed before Johnson was forced to take the wheel, but she came face-to-face with the realities of climate change. Johnson, now 17 and a senior at Lake Oswego High School, was among the student leaders who urged Oregon lawmakers this year to require climate change education across all grade levels in Oregon schools.

“It’s really important to integrate that when you’re young, so you have that knowledge and feel like you can make a difference, rather than having it thrown on you and feel like the world’s ending,” she said.

Johnson serves as president of her school’s Green Team, a student sustainability group, and helped establish a composting program this year to reduce waste.

“It gave me a lot of hope, and it’s important to let students have that kind of hands-on experience,” she said. “When you’re actually doing something and seeing progress, it can diminish a lot of that anxiety. Kids should be able to have that experience wherever they are.”

The Oregon bill did not advance this session, but New Jersey last school year became the first state to incorporate climate change lessons into its education standards for kindergarten through 12th grade. Connecticut will be the second state to do so, starting next month.

Several other states are considering similar measures, while some have provided funding for climate learning opportunities. Most states have adopted standards that include climate change, but education experts say the subject is taught spottily and is usually limited to science classes. Some educators say there’s growing recognition that climate change demands a more comprehensive approach.

“Today’s students are tomorrow’s consumers, workers and voters,” said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, an Oakland, California-based nonprofit. “Increasingly, they’re going to be faced with the need to make decisions about issues related to climate change.”

Efforts to require climate change learning have mostly been proposed in progressive-leaning states. Some observers have questioned whether efforts to set learning standards via legislation could clash with the typical multiyear process overseen by state boards of education.

Meanwhile, leaders in some conservative states say mainstream climate science is an attack on the fossil fuel industry, and some are pushing schools to teach “both sides.”

“What I think is controversial is different views that exist out there about the extent of the climate change and the solutions to try to alter climate change,” Ohio state Rep. Jerry Cirino, a Republican, told Energy News Network.

The Oregon bill Johnson and others supported would have directed school districts to teach climate change with a focus on local impacts and solutions. Backers said lawmakers were generally supportive but wanted to see a more specific plan with guidance and resources to help schools to meet the new directive. The bill did not get a vote in committee, but supporters hope a new draft will pass in the next legislative session.

Breck Foster, one of Johnson’s teachers, serves as a board member for Oregon Green Schools, a nonprofit focused on climate education and sustainability. She’s found ways to incorporate climate learning into her social studies and Spanish classes.

A youth group participate in cleaning up trash at Venice Beach for Earth Day on April 22, 2023, in Los Angeles, California. – Beach and river cleanups are being held across Southern California on the 53rd anniversary of Earth Day, started a year after the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill about a hundred miles north of Venice on the California coast. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP) (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

“Kids understand the gloom and doom, and there’s a lot of fatalism in their comments, but they don’t have a lot of the facts,” said Foster, who also serves on the steering committee of Oregon Educators for Climate Education, a group that pushed for the bill. “It was very enlightening to them to connect it to the idea of policies that are being implemented and goals that are being set.”

New Jersey goes first

New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy led the push for the state’s new standards, which were adopted in 2020 by the state Board of Education. She said kids already see the effects of climate change, citing the wildfires in Canada earlier this month that blanketed the Northeast in smoke.

“Our children are seeing this as much as we are,” she said in an interview with Stateline. “To put our heads in the sand and pretend that the sky is not orange — they understand that.”

New Jersey requires schools to incorporate climate change lessons into almost all subject areas, not just science class, because “students have different ways of learning and every student has a favorite class,” Murphy said.

To help schools meet the new guidelines, the state has created lesson plans and professional development for teachers, and is offering millions of dollars in grants to support hands-on learning. The state established those resources in partnership with groups such as Sustainable Jersey, a nonprofit network that certifies municipalities and schools on sustainability standards.

Those tools, said Randall Solomon, Sustainable Jersey’s executive director, were just as important as the standards themselves.

“You can’t just wave a magic wand and expect 150,000 teachers and 2,500 schools to coordinate to teach climate change,” he said. “To really enable them to do it well requires the development of resources and tools, training and a way to track progress.”

Next month, Connecticut schools also will be required to teach climate change to all grade levels, following the enactment of a state law last legislative session.

“Every single kid I talk to and work with, this is what’s No. 1 on their minds, this is the existential crisis of their lifetimes,” said state Rep. Christine Palm, a Democrat who sponsored the measure, which was tucked into a larger budget bill.

Los Angeles youth and activists hold signs as they take part in a worldwide Global Climate Strike to declare a climate justice emergency in Los Angeles, on September 23, 2022. (Photo by Frederic J. Brown / AFP) (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

Including solutions

Several other states, including California, Massachusetts and New York, are considering bills that would require more climate change learning in public schools.

“This is a very important topic, and I want to make sure this is happening throughout the state and not only in some regions,” said Massachusetts state Rep. Danillo Sena, a Democrat who has sponsored a bill to include climate change in state learning standards.

Sena said he is hopeful that the bill will receive a hearing this year.

Other states, including Maine and Washington, have provided funding to support professional development and training opportunities for educators on climate issues.

The Center for Green Schools, a project of the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council that promotes and certifies sustainable buildings, released a report last week on the importance of climate change education.

Anisa Heming, the center’s director, noted that many youth leaders have become powerful advocates on climate change, and many of today’s students will need to fill jobs in emerging fields such as clean energy.

“Kids have a tendency to disengage if they don’t have a sense that there are solutions, that they have some power in the situation and the adults around them are acting,” she said. “We have to arm them with the solutions, and then we have to act ourselves so they can see that those solutions are serious.”

Climate skeptics

Leaders in some states, though, want to push climate change education in another direction. Cirino, the Ohio lawmaker, has proposed a bill that would “allow and encourage students to reach their own conclusions” on issues like climate change.

Cirino did not respond to a Stateline request for comment.

And in Texas, the state Board of Education directed schools earlier this year to provide textbooks that portray “positive” aspects of fossil fuels and suggest rising temperatures are caused by natural cycles, Scientific American reported. Board member Patricia Hardy, who drafted the rules, told the publication that fossil fuels help fund Texas schools and said teachers shouldn’t “just be presenting one side.”

Hardy did not respond to a request for comment.

Twenty states follow Next Generation Science Standards developed by a consortium of states and education groups, which do address climate change, most often in science classes. Another 24 states have enacted similar standards of their own. But the six outlier states include Florida and Texas, with massive amounts of students.

Branch, with the science education group, said the standards are taught inconsistently, often because teachers themselves have not had courses on climate change. That leaves most students well short of the comprehensive climate change education now required in New Jersey.

Leaders in New Jersey say their first school year under the new requirements has been a success, though some teachers aren’t yet totally comfortable. They hope the state’s standards, along with the resources it’s drafted to help schools adapt, can provide a template for others.

“I am desperate to get other states to join us,” said Murphy, New Jersey’s first lady. “It’s great that the next generation of New Jersey students are going to own this space, but we’re not going to solve climate change on our own.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2023 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Joe Biden’s brother says the president is ‘very open-minded’ about psychedelics for medical treatment

• June 30, 2023

By AAMER MADHANI and JESSE BEDAYN | Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s youngest brother said in a radio interview Wednesday that the president has been “very open-minded” in conversations the two have had about the benefits of psychedelics as a form of medical treatment.

Frank Biden made the comments during a call into The Michael Smerconish Program on SiriusXM. The host had just interviewed a Wall Street Journal reporter who recently wrote about powerful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and employees who believe the use of psychedelics and similar substances can help lead to business breakthroughs.

“He is very open-minded,” Frank Biden said when asked by Smerconish about conversations he’s had with the president on the topic. “Put it that way. I don’t want to speak, I’m talking brother-to-brother. Brother-to-brother,” the younger Biden said. “The question is, is the world, is the U.S. ready for this? My opinion is that we are on the cusp of a consciousness that needs to be brought about to solve a lot of the problems in and around addiction, but as importantly, to make us aware of the fact that we’re all one people and we’ve got to come together.”

Frank Biden added that he had “done a great deal of research” on the issue “because I’m a recovering alcoholic for many, many years.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

RELATED: Aaron Rodgers says ayahuasca with teammates, astrology helped form strong bonds: “It is radically life-changing”

Some researchers believe psilocybin, the compound in psychedelic mushrooms, changes the way the brain organizes itself and can help users overcome things like depression, alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder. A drug that’s related to the anesthetic ketamine was cleared by the FDA to help people with hard-to-treat depression.

But medical experts caution that more research is needed on the drugs’ efficacy and the extent of the risks of psychedelics, which can cause hallucinations.

The American Psychiatric Association has not endorsed the use of psychedelics in treatment, noting the Food and Drug Administration has yet to offer a final determination. The FDA designated psilocybin as a “breakthrough therapy” in 2018, a label that’s designed to speed the development and review of drugs to treat a serious condition. MDMA, also known as ecstasy, also has that designation for PTSD treatment.

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The FDA last week released draft guidance for researchers designing clinical trials testing psychedelic drugs as potential treatments for a variety of medical conditions. The Biden administration has also provided to the National Institutes of Health and other agencies funding for dozens of projects studying psychedelic drugs with potential benefit for mental and behavioral health.

Earlier this year, Oregon became the first state in the nation to legalize the adult use of psilocybin. Colorado’s voters last year voted to decriminalize psilocybin.

Republican strongholds, including Utah and Missouri, have or are considering commissioning studies into the drugs, partly inspired by veterans’ who have used psilocybin to help with PTSD.

Former Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry spoke at a conference last week in Colorado about helping get a bill passed in the Texas legislature in 2021 to fund a study of psilocybin for veterans. He doesn’t support recreational use.

In Congress, similar veteran-focused proposals brought progressive Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York and far-right Rep. Matt Gaetz from Florida into an unlikely alignment.

​ Orange County Register 

How much opioid settlement money is your county getting and will it help?

• June 30, 2023

“It took away the pain — all the pain,” said a doctor who fell victim to the charms of Oxycontin. “In the brain, in the heart, in the body. That’s what we’re up against.”

Every day in California, 20 people die of opioid-related overdoses, and many thousands more wrestle with the ravages of addiction. After years of legal wrangling, the companies that made and distributed the first waves of these super-addictive drugs — aggressively pushing doctors to prescribe them and insisting they weren’t addictive — are doing a financial penance that’s washing into most every neighborhood in America.

California and its counties will get about $3.5 billion over the next decade-plus from opioid settlements, according to the Attorney General’s office. The first waves of that money are arriving, and the lion’s share of it is in the control of local governments — primarily your county board of supervisors, but also cities.

To date, California’s state and local governments are owed $425 million from various opioid settlement funds, with $59.5 million for Los Angeles County and its cities, $22.7 million for Orange County and its cities, $17.7 million for Riverside County and its cities, and $12.7 million for San Bernardino County and its cities, according to data from Brown Greer, court-appointed funds administrator, and published by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Hundreds of millions more will funnel to California governments over the next several years. This money is meant to ameliorate harm. Will it, can it, actually make a difference?

“Policymakers, community leaders, and all those affected, want to avoid the outcomes of the tobacco litigation, in which only 2.6% of litigation payouts actually went to smoking prevention and cessation programs,” said a blueprint for wise settlement spending compiled by experts from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Yale, Stanford, RAND Corporation and others.

“State and local policymakers will, in many cases, have considerable discretion over how these lawsuit dollars will be spent in their communities — and they will need to weigh important trade-offs and make evidence-informed decisions to ensure the funds are well-spent.”

The money won’t come close to covering the $1 trillion in public and private costs of the opioid crisis, wrote Rebecca Lee Haffajee and Bradley D. Stein of RAND. But the infusion of dollars could quickly save lives and mitigate lifelong harms.

“It matters how this money is earmarked for use,” they wrote. “Settlement money should be spent in three areas that research shows will substantially reduce deaths and improve lives: preventing overdoses and other harms to those using opioids, providing evidence-based addiction treatment, and offering services for mothers and children affected by the crisis.”

Transparency is vital as these funds make their way into the world, said Stein, director of the NIH-funded RAND-USC Schaeffer Opioid Policy Center and senior physician policy researcher at RAND. But getting specifics from local governments is still very much a work in progress.

Destination: Still largely unclear

In giant Los Angeles County, which gets the biggest slice of the pie in Southern California, a county team is working on the final details of a multi-year spending plan that will be presented to the Board of Supervisors “as soon as possible,” officials said.

Officials are working with community-based service providers — who are on the ground and understand the most critical needs — to shape L.A. County’s plan, and the public will get to weigh in soon when it goes to the Board of Supervisors for approval. Expect to see proposals for harm reduction and overdose prevention programs, as well as recovery housing and youth education.

San Bernardino County is working on a plan. So is Riverside County, focusing on training, enhancing data collection, prevention, treatment, recovery efforts and a public education campaign. It’s expected to go to the Board of Supervisors this summer.

Costa Mesa hasn’t decided where to spend the money yet. Neither has the city of San Bernardino.

Annastasia Rose Beal of Harm Reduction Circle hands out Narcan and supplies in Santa Ana in April.(Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Santa Ana plans to use the money for homeless-related services, to buy naloxone and train first responders. The Riverside city council will debate the same options in late August, and will also consider using the cash to fund new positions like substance use disorder counselor, social worker and/or behavioral health clinician.

More than a dozen cities’ shares are so small they’re forwarding it to the County of Orange. The County of Orange has launched a data dashboard tracking “Orange County Drug and Alcohol Misuse and Mortality trends” to better target services where they’re needed, to be funded with settlement funds, and plans to provide medication-assisted treatment to folks in jail, greater support for pregnant women and families, buy Narcan and fentanyl test strips and launch a public education campaign.

Newport Beach, though, is forging ahead. It plans to use $396,000 to make naloxone — the drug that can reverse overdoses and essentially bring people back from the dead — more readily available beyond police and firefighters, including training workers at bars, restaurants, hotels, gas stations and other common places people might overdose.

“We will also be developing a public outreach campaign aimed at educating the public on the availability of Narcan, how to use it, and encouraging people to use it when in doubt (no downside if a person isn’t overdosing),” said John Pope, spokesman for Newport Beach, by email.

“Our thought is that most people understand the risks at this point, so we won’t be repeating the ‘one pill can kill’ type messaging. Instead, we want to make Narcan distribution more of a public health resource, similar to having first aid kids handy and knowing the basics of how to use it.”

Newport Beach has an internal working group that will keep tabs on the program and make adjustments. “One thing we’ll learn is how much Narcan to buy, how much gets used, and how we plan for that,” Pope said. “There’s an expiration date attached so we don’t want to buy less than we need, but also don’t want to buy a whole lot more. I could see some of the training components living past the grant, like the school presentations.”

Blueprints for wise spending

The opioid settlement agreements have taken pains to be specific about how the money can be spent, and how it will be reported, in an effort to not repeat past mistakes.

File photo.

Back in 1998, state governments reached an enormous, 25-year, $246 billion deal with the nation’s largest tobacco companies. It was to be penance for lies about the lethal effects of smoking and fund anti-tobacco programs. But what happened has been the source of debate, discouragement and disappointment, said Harvard University’s Allan M. Brandt in the Harvard Gazette.

“The $246 billion was used to fill budget gaps, build roads, and for other purposes; only very rarely was it used for any form of public health, let alone reducing tobacco use, treating those who were addicted, and protecting kids from becoming smokers,” he said. “It’s become a notorious example of collecting a lot of funds through litigation, but not getting those funds to those who most need or deserve them. I think a lot of people have watched the emergence of the opioid litigation with the tobacco settlement cloud hanging over the proceedings.”

To dispel that cloud, experts have been working for years on blueprints for wise spending.

RAND says that distributing naloxone, detecting fentanyl, providing sterile syringes and connecting people to adequate housing are the quickest routes to immediately and effectively reduce overdose rates.

Experts at Johns Hopkins offer five basic principles:

• Spend money to save lives (not fill budget holes);

• Use evidence to guide spending (fund treatment that offers medication to curb opioid abuse — not simply AA-style 12-step programs so ubiquitous in California);

• Invest in youth prevention (not simply school campaigns warning about drug danger, but real support for families struggling with addiction, as those kids are most at risk);

• Focus on racial equity;

• And develop a fair and transparent process for deciding where to spend the money (“guided by public health leaders with the active engagement of people and families with lived experience, clinicians, as well as other key groups.”)

Taken under advisement

With all that in mind, California’s Department of Health Care Services has issued a 17-page “allowable expenditures” bulletin to guide local governments as they wrestle with spending decisions right now.

Settlement money should be spent on “creating new or expanded substance use disorder treatment infrastructure,” interventions to prevent addiction in vulnerable youth, diverting people from the justice system to effective treatment, buying naloxone and addressing the needs of communities of color. And there’s an emphasis on medication-assisted treatment, still rejected by 41% of California’s licensed and certified treatment centers.

Josh Page holds a picture of his friend Timmy Solomon who died of an apparent drug overdose Sept. 2 at age 31. Solomon’s struggle was depicted in SCNG’s Rehab Riviera coverage. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

It’s still very early, but RAND’s Stein is cautiously optimistic.

“Overall, my sense is that, with the guardrails the states and others have set up, we’ll be able to avoid some of the worst things we saw in the tobacco settlement,” he said.

“We want to see the money flowing toward what works. Harm reduction. Treatment with medication. We know there’s a solid evidence base there, and that’s good.

“Where you see some concerns is in communities where funds go to treatment facilities that provide no medication treatment at all. While it isn’t going to work for everyone, it should certainly be an option.”

The singular focus on overdose deaths — overlooking those who use and remain very much alive and struggling — dearly needs attention, he said. “We have much poorer data on the range of harms that aren’t fatal overdoses. That heavily impact families and children.”

Transparency and inclusion are concerns of Susan G. Sherman of Johns Hopkins.

“Every context and community is different and is going to have different needs. But one thing that’s vital no matter where you are is: Who do you have in the process? Who is helping draw up these plans? Officials? People actively using? Family members?” she said. “You’re cutting yourself off at the knees when you’re not including a whole range of people. It’s often easier to have family members rather than people who are using, but the services serve them and they know what their needs are. That also provides meaning, and we know that having meaning in their lives allows them to make different choices.”

The public will get input when plans go to boards and city councils for approval, officials said. It’s a rare opportunity.

“For a generation or more, the U.S. has made little investment in building the capacity of the substance use disorder treatment system,” a coalition of experts said. “That system ….has not been subject to the requirements of modern health care, including the critical need to promote evidence-based treatment. As a result, a range of practices have been allowed to co-exist, leaving to chance whether consumers receive treatments that work or treatments that may be ineffective or even harmful.

“Abatement funds from opioid-related litigation offer an opportunity for a significant resetting of how we will deliver care for opioid use disorder in the future. …Thus, promoting ‘what works’ is of critical import.”

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Staff writer Laylan Connelly contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

AVP professional beach volleyball returns to Hermosa Beach July 7

• June 30, 2023

The Association of Volleyball Professionals is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year with tournaments across the country — including a return to LA County’s beach cities beginning next week.

The AVP’s Hermosa Beach tournament will begin Friday, July 7, while the one in Manhattan Beach is set for August.

There will be 16 women’s and men’s teams competing for titles and a $125,000 purse from July 7 to 9, with that tournament taking place next to the Hermosa Beach Pier. The future of the sport — the AVP Juniors — will also compete next week, with that competition beginning a few days before the professionals get underway.

In the 2022 tournament, Chaim Schalk and Theo Brunner were victorious in the men’s bracket, defeating Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander. Sarah Sponcil and Terese Cannon took home the women’s title last year, but are not competing in this year’s tournament, according to the AVP.

The defending champs have new partners this year, with Schalk now competing with Tri Bourne and Brunner with Trevor Crabb.

While the Manhattan Beach AVP is known as the “granddaddy” of beach volleyball tournaments, the first AVP tournament took place in Hermosa Beach in 1984, according to avp.com. The first women’s tournament in Hermosa Beach was in 1993.

The AVP Juniors National Championships, from Wednesday, July 5, to July 9, in Hermosa Beach, “involves hundreds of teams flying in from around the country that have been competing all spring and early summer to be crowned junior champion,” said AVP CEO Al Lau.

The juniors event includes boys and girls divisions, featuring players from 12 to 18 years old.

Along with USA Volleyball, the AVP hosts a U.S. Beach Club Championship, which also features youth volleyball players and takes place in Hermosa Beach from July 9 to 11.

“When you look at next weekend in Hermosa,” Lau said, “it’s not only the AVP pros, people aspiring to go to the Olympics next year in Paris, there’s (also) that element of the next generation represented.”

The AVP action on the sand will take place from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day.

All main draw matches on Stadium Court will stream live on ESPN+ and all matches played on Courts 1 and 2 will be available live on the Bally Live app, according to an AVP press release.

Live coverage of the women’s and men’s finals of the Hermosa Beach Open is scheduled for Sunday, July 9, starting at 1 p.m. on ESPNU.

Admission to the AVP is free, but Club AVP and courtside boxes have limited availability.

​ Orange County Register 

Judge denies two emergency requests related to Huntington Beach air show settlement

• June 30, 2023

A state judge on Friday, June 30, denied two emergency requests related to Huntington Beach’s near $5 million settlement with the operator of its annual air show over cancelling a day because of an oil spill – one sought to prevent the city from paying out the settlement and the other to require the city to release a full copy of the agreement.

City Attorney Michael Gates said Friday that Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael Strickroth denied both emergency requests. A full hearing for the two cases is scheduled for July 17 before Judge Martha Gooding.

The settlement between the city and Pacific Airshow LLC was announced in May, with the city agreeing to pay the air show operator nearly $5 million. Huntington Beach could pay $2 million more if the city recovers additional money through its lawsuit against Amplify Energy Corp., the company that owns the pipeline that leaked in 2021, forcing the cancellation of the last day of the air show. 

Gates said he was happy with Friday’s outcome.

“I think Judge Strickroth got it right. There’s absolutely no urgency on any of this,” Gates said.

Former Huntington Beach Mayor Connie Boardman and former Planning Commissioner Mark Bixby filed the lawsuit to block the settlement. Huntington Beach resident and former City Council candidate Gina Clayton-Tarvin filed a separate lawsuit to get a copy of the air show settlement that Gates has refused to release.

“His dismissal of the demands by Clayton-Tarvin, Boardman and Bixby speaks to the merits of their claims. If their claims were compelling, the judge’s ruling might have been different,” Gates said.

The city has already budgeted the first settlement payment of $1.9 million that could be sent as early as July 1, Gates said. According to a summary of the settlement agreement, Pacific Airshow LLC must be paid that first installment by the end of July. If a judge rules against the city, Gates said any payment made could be retrieved.

Boardman and Bixby’s attorney Lee Fink said Friday that he remains hopeful going into the hearing on July 17 because the judge did not throw out their case.

“So the fact he’s put it over is a telltale sign that our application is good,” Fink said. 

Related links

First day of Pacific Airshow brings high-flying action above Huntington Beach
Here’s what it looks like to fly with the planes in the Pacific Airshow
Major oil spill closes OC beaches, kills wildlife in Huntington Beach
A year later, the Huntington Beach oil spill still is being felt

​ Orange County Register