The Brief

Bernard Groves has spent five years trying to quit methamphetamine.

He lost his job. He lost his car. He nearly lost his apartment. Worse than that, he says, his addiction has hurt his family.

“I went [to lunch] with my auntie and I saw such sadness in her eyes,” Groves said.

The 35-year-old checked himself into several rehab programs in San Diego and San Francisco hoping "to be that Bernard I used to be for the people that I love."

But each time, Groves felt the progress he made in therapy morphed into people talking at him, telling him what to do. Eventually, he would always return to meth.

“My best friend was like, ‘I don't get it, Bernard. You put your mind to something, you've always been able to achieve it. Why can't you get over this meth?’ ” Groves said. “I don't know why. And it feels awful.”

Unlike opioid addiction, there are no FDA-approved medications for the more than 3 million Americans addicted to stimulants like meth and cocaine. Instead, the most effective treatment is low-tech — and more controversial: Give people retail gift cards usually worth less than $30 in exchange for negative drug tests. Research shows that it works, and after more than three decades of resistance, policymakers are finally giving that strategy a chance.

Bernard Groves (left) has been going to contingency management sessions with his counselor Andrew Dertien (right) since June to try to kick his meth addiction.

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Lusen Mendel for Tradeoffs

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‘This isn’t treatment’

Offering people small rewards for not using drugs — known as contingency management — dates back to the 1980s. Patients are tested for drugs regularly over several months. They receive a gift card for every negative result, and payouts grow with each test.

The treatment is based on a well-established concept that positive reinforcement is an effective motivator. Animals pull levers when rewarded with food. Students’ behavior improves by letting them watch TV after class. Compared to traditional counseling, researchers have found people are twice as likely to stop using meth or cocaine if they receive gift cards.

Studies suggest the immediate excitement of getting a gift card after a negative test replaces the dopamine rush people get from using drugs. Scientists hypothesize this activity effectively rewires our brains.

But the approach has failed to catch on in spite of the evidence.

Rick Rawson, a professor emeritus of psychology at UCLA and early proponent of contingency management, says many addiction care providers historically dismissed the treatment as a form of bribery.

“You would hear things like, this isn't treatment, this is just paying people not to use drugs,” Rawson said. “It wasn't a medicine. It wasn't talk therapy. It was this sort of transactional thing.”

Concerns of fraud have also stymied contingency management's growth. Rawson persuaded California health officials to fund a pilot program in 2005. But the work stopped abruptly after federal health officials warned participating clinics that the project ran afoul of rules designed to prevent doctors from luring patients into their offices and then charging Medicaid for care they never provided.

“I'd pretty much given up,” Rawson said after Medicaid shut down the pilot. “I figured this just isn't going to happen.”

Contingency management gets second chance

Outside of the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has offered contingency management since 2011, the treatment lay dormant for nearly a decade. But attitudes began to shift after the synthetic opioid fentanyl fueled a rise in overdose deaths in the U.S., Rawson said.

“People started to recognize that a lot of these people are buying cocaine or methamphetamine and dying of fentanyl overdoses because fentanyl is mixed into the drug supply,” said Rawson.

In the last four years, some states have relied on federal grants or court rulings against opioid manufacturers to fund their contingency management programs. In California — where overdose deaths involving meth have skyrocketed — health officials asked the federal government to allow the state to become the first in the nation to pay for contingency management with Medicaid dollars.

The Biden administration greenlit the plan along with a broader package of non-traditional health care services California is testing called CalAIM. Under the state’s contingency management program, which launched last year, gift cards after each stimulant-free urine test start at $10 and climb up to $26.50. A patient who tests negative every time over six months can earn up to $599, which can be paid out individually or in a lump sum.

It's unclear if that is enough money to persuade people to quit. Most studies show contingency management works best when patients can make upward of $1,000. California picked a lower amount to avoid triggering tax problems for patients or compromising their eligibility for other public benefits like food assistance.

The value of the gift cards have worked for Bernard Groves. He's been off meth since the first week of July, one of his longest stretches since he started trying to shake the habit.

He's used the gift cards to buy exercise weights at Walmart and food for his pet bird London at Petco. He's also used the money to pick up donuts or a movie night with his mom, sister and grandma.

“Being able to treat my family and do things for them is special,” Groves said. “It brought some joy back in my life.”

He’s surprised at how much pleasure he’s gotten from the program.

“Like, how could you say you're excited to pee in a cup? But I was, every week.”

Groves hopes this approach will help him finally kick his meth use. Recent studies have found people are more likely to stay off stimulants for up to a year after these programs, compared to counseling and 12-step programs.

California’s approach leaves some patients out

Nearly 4,000 people have participated in California’s new program as of September 2024. Researchers at UCLA say at least 75% of urine samples submitted by patients in the program have been negative for stimulants, and clinics say many of their patients have gotten into housing, gone back to work and reconnected with their families.

But California has an estimated 210,000 people on Medicaid who are addicted to meth or cocaine. Medicaid in California generally only covers addiction treatment through specialty addiction clinics, so most people who get their treatment from primary care doctors, community health clinics or hospitals are unable to access contingency management.

Ayesha Appa is an addiction specialist who runs an HIV clinic at San Francisco General Hospital, where most of her patients are homeless, using meth and on Medicaid. She offered contingency management through a private grant until funding ran out in June, and she’s ineligible to offer it through CalAIM.

“It feels both incredibly frustrating and just heartbreaking as a provider,” Appa said, to know a powerful treatment exists that she can’t offer. “It feels like I have a patient living with diabetes, and instead of being able to offer them insulin, all I can do is talk with them about diet and exercise, even though I know there’s a better option out there.”

She thinks often of one patient, a 45-year-old woman, who “desperately wanted to stop using” meth, but who struggled to quit. Appa urged her to visit a CalAIM clinic to get contingency management treatment, but the woman didn’t trust other doctors. Ultimately, the woman overdosed and died.

“What if we could have offered her contingency management in the clinic that she was coming into already?” Appa said. “When I think about her, it's an equal mix of guilt and regret because it truly felt like we could have done more.”

'People get better'

California Medicaid Director Tyler Sadwith believes in the power of this treatment, but has taken a careful approach as the state attempts to scale this work because of the stigma contingency management still has among some health providers and lawmakers.

Sadwith said he appreciates that more people could benefit right now, but starting small gives proponents their best chance of convincing state and federal leaders to extend and expand the program beyond its current end date of 2026.

“We need to prove that this works and that this works well,” Sadwith said. “We feel the importance and the weight of getting this right” as the first state in the nation to cover this sort of treatment under Medicaid.

To make sure programs deliver the treatment effectively and minimize the chance of fraud, California requires clinics go through extra training and inspections, and makes clinicians enter their results into a central database. Clinics also have to dedicate three staffers to the program, a workforce requirement that has forced some providers to delay starting the treatment or not participate at all.

So far, state officials have set aside $5.6 million to help clinics stand up their programs, and Sadwith is eager to reach more patients.

“We want to use this opportunity to prove to the public, to the field, to our federal partners, and to other states that this works,” Sadwith said. “People get better, and there is a role for contingency management in Medicaid.”

At least three other states — Montana, Washington and Delaware — are now running their own programs through Medicaid, and four others are seeking federal approval.

This story comes from the health policy news organization Tradeoffs. Ryan Levi is a reporter/producer for the show, where a version of this story first appeared. Listen to the story here:

Copyright 2024 TRADEOFFS

The L.A. County Medical Examiner has released the cause of death for Emily Beutner, the daughter of former LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner.

The 22-year-old died from the effects of a combination of drugs, including two linked to the opioid known as kratom — mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine — according to the statement released by the medical examiner on Friday.

A county health official told our partner CBS L.A. that kratom products are sometimes sold as natural remedies but are illegal and unsafe.

The other two substances cited as causes of death were quetiapine and mirtazapine — the former is an antipsychotic medication, and the latter is used to treat depression, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The former Loyola Marymount University student was found alone and suffering from medical distress by L.A. County Fire Department personnel shortly after midnight in a field by a highway in Palmdale on January 6. She was transported to a hospital and pronounced dead soon after.

After his daughter's death, Beutner dropped out of the L.A. mayoral race to unseat incumbent Karen Bass.

The Medical Examiner said the manner of death was ruled as suicide.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a crisis, you can dial the mental health lifeline at 988.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

There’s a familiar shorthand history of the L.A. band Los Lobos: four working-class Chicano musicians in their early twenties — David Hidalgo, Conrad Lozano, Louie Pérez and Cesar Rosas — got together in 1973 and began playing traditional Mexican music. That’s the music they recorded for their first album, 1978’s “Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles (Just Another Band From East L.A.).” 

A few years later, they moved on to the other music they grew up listening to — rock, R&B and blues. After adding saxophonist Steve Berlin and releasing two critically acclaimed albums in the mid-1980s, they were tapped to perform Ritchie Valens’ songs for the hit 1987 film, “La Bamba.” The soundtrack album topped the Billboard charts and catapulted the band to rock star status. 

But instead of continuing along that gilded path, they reverted to the traditional sounds — both in Spanish and English — that meant so much to them. Fifty-plus years after starting out, Los Lobos are still at it, and now a new documentary is digging deep into their ups and downs — and how they always stayed true to their East L.A. roots.

“Los Lobos: Native Sons” — co-directed by Doug Blush and Piero F. Giunti — had its world premiere on Sunday at the SXSW Film & TV Festival in Austin, Texas. The band was in attendance, proudly walking the red carpet in front of the historic Paramount Theatre. The film, which took 4 ½ years to complete, combines archival photos and film/video footage (17 boxes of material from Pérez alone), alongside contemporary interviews with the band members, their families and a host of admirers, including Linda Ronstadt, Rubén Blades, Dolores Huerta, Cheech Marin, Edward James Olmos, George Lopez and others.

“I thought the film was great,” said Pérez, speaking from his home a few days after the premiere. “There were tears, cheers … I was moved.”

The new documentary “Los Lobos: Native Sons” was 4 1/2 years in the making.

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Pérez said he was particularly touched by a part in the film when his wife talks about the song, “A Matter of Time,” off the band’s album, “How Will the Wolf Survive?” from 1984. Pérez noted that he and Hidalgo wrote the song about a Mexican migrant worker who has to part ways with his family:

In the film, Mary Pérez becomes emotional as she describes how the song was just as much about the band members leaving their families behind when they went on tour, the kids waking up to find their fathers gone.

“That song became our narrative,” Louie Pérez said in our interview. In the film, he bluntly states that the band “wouldn’t exist without the women in our lives.” Those women were the den mothers of the wolfpack, holding down the fort at home, accompanying the band on tour when possible, with some of the kids eventually jamming with their dads onstage.

Personal stories aside, the documentary also poetically frames the band’s — and the country’s — evolution over a half-century. “I saw the face of America change,” Pérez says in the film. “And that face is brown.”

Days after the premiere, Pérez reflected on the band’s journey. “All our success, all our hard work — we’re fortunate to be where we are considering where we came from.”

Los Lobos continue to perform after 53 years as a band.

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From Garfield High School to playing at weddings and quinceañeras to performing in the Obama White House and winning four Grammy Awards, Los Lobos has exemplified — indeed, helped define — what it means to be Mexican American.

“We set out to de-mystify what a Mexican was, what a Chicano was,” Pérez said. “We needed to let people know who we were.”

And that they did, and continue to do — for 53 years and counting. 

“At this point in my life,” said the 73-year-old Pérez, “I’ve never been more proud to be who I am.”

On Friday, K-pop's biggest group, BTS, released its highly anticipated new album, Arirang. It's the first project featuring all seven members of the boy band in nearly four years, following a hiatus for mandatory military service in South Korea.

Individual members — particularly Jimin and Jung Kook — have achieved significant solo success since then, but the return of BTS in full force signals a massive moment for the genre the group helped turn into a global powerhouse. In 2018, BTS' album Love Yourself: Tear became the first K-pop album to ever top the Billboard 200 chart. The band would go on to reach that milestone five more times in four years.

Since BTS' hiatus, K-pop has reached unprecedented heights in mainstream culture, largely thanks to groups like Blackpink, NewJeans, and of course, the artists behind Netflix's animated film KPop Demon Hunters (which led to the first-ever Grammy win for a K-pop song). But even during their time out of the spotlight, BTS' impact — and the promise of its return — has lingered over the genre.

"It's interesting to me because a lot of people are crediting 'Golden' and KPop Demon Hunters with bringing people into K-pop," Billboard journalist Tetris Kelly told NPR's Morning Edition. "But I don't think that the success of even 'Golden' would've happened if BTS didn't already push that door open for this kind of moment."

K-pop may have grown (and Westernized) during BTS' time away — but if the preliminary numbers for their comeback are any indication, pop culture (and their fervent fanbase, known as the "ARMY") has been eagerly awaiting the band's return. Here are just a few ways to measure how enormous the impact is expected to be:

ARIRANG album presales

In January, South Korean news outlets reported that presales for Arirang — advance orders ahead of the album's release — had likely surpassed 4 million copies within one week of the album being announced. In the U.S., BTS' last release, the 2022 compilation Proof, sold 314,000 copies in its first week. Arirang seems likely to eclipse that mark.

Concert in Seoul

On Saturday, BTS will perform a free concert in Seoul's Gwanghwamun Square. Although about 22,000 fans secured tickets to the show, authorities expect closer to a quarter of a million people to show up to the event. Billboard journalist Tetris Kelly told NPR's Morning Edition that the anticipated crowds have activated security concerns, leading authorities to seal off around 30 buildings in the surrounding areas. According to the BBC, ARMY members had already started gathering on Friday afternoon, and the city of Seoul had deployed thousands of police officers to monitor the area.

Luckily for fans around the world, Netflix will also be live-streaming the performance in 190 countries at 4 a.m. on Saturday. It will be the streaming giant's first time globally broadcasting a concert, and tens of millions of viewers are expected to watch. In interviews with the press, Brandon Riegg, Netflix's vice president of nonfiction series and sports, suggested the show could be part of a longer-term investment in South Korean culture.

"We have high expectations with this inaugural concert, but it certainly should signal a greater appetite that we have to work with other artists and labels throughout Korea and Asia in general," Riegg told Reuters.

On March 27, Netflix will also release a documentary about the making of Arirang and the band's blockbuster return.

Sold out tour

After Saturday's concert, BTS will keep the momentum going — first at an intimate performance hosted by Spotify in New York City, and then on a sold out global tour that kicks off in South Korea on April 9.

The Arirang tour, or at least this initial leg, which spans across multiple continents and more than 70 shows, will extend into the spring of 2027. Within just a few days of tickets going on sale, all of the North America, Europe and U.K. stadium dates sold out. The total number of tickets sold, according to Live Nation: close to 2.4 million. The first two dates of the tour will also be screened in movie theaters around the world. Bloomberg projects that BTS' tour could rival Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, which is the most successful tour of all time.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Curious gardeners have been noticing more grasshoppers — a lot more. And inquiring minds want to know why — and what can be done about these insects with a reputation for destruction.

" So what happens is the standard grasshopper that we think of can become a locust if the weather conditions are right," said Lynn Kimsey, a distinguished professor emerita at UC Davis who specializes in bugs.  "In a true outbreak, they would be, you know, crossing roads by the thousands."

We are nowhere approaching outbreak proportions in Southern California.

But Eric Middleton, an entomologist with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources who works in pest management, can answer the why.

Big shocker: It's the weather

"For a grasshopper population to grow, you need a wet winter or spring so there's a lot of vegetation growing," said Middleton, who is based in San Diego. "Then you need warm conditions, which allow the young grasshoppers to emerge."

Think back to the intense bouts of rain Los Angeles received over the last months, the green hillsides and recent heatwave — these are the exact conditions for a grasshopper explosion.

"It's the same thing that triggers locust outbreaks in the Middle East and North Africa, or North Dakota, places like this," Kimsey said. "It's pretty common."

Many species of grasshopper skip and scatter around Southern California. Probably the most common, Middleton said, is the gray bird grasshopper. They're 2 to 3 inches long, with larger wings, and  their populations start peaking around now.

Another common species is  the valley grasshopper, which is about an inch long.

What you should do? Less is more

Depending on the species' life cycle, both Middleton and Kimsey said they expect this overpopulation to taper off by summer.

"It's not going to be a permanent thing," Kimsey said. " Usually they become bird food or mammal food because everything likes to eat them."

If they pose a threat to your garden, don't go reaching for insecticides, the experts said.

 "Usually, they don't do a ton of damage to your garden," Middleton said.

So try catching them by hand or using temporary netting.

" This too shall pass," he added.

Alternatively, Kimsey said, they make a killer snack.

"They really are quite tasty. I highly recommend it," she said. "Like French fries, especially if you fry them."