The Brief

The idea seems simple enough.

Preserve all the rituals of smoking: Light up a cigarette, inhale the smoke, including the nasty stuff that can kill you, and exhale. But remove most of the nicotine, the chemical that makes tobacco so darn hard to quit, to help smokers smoke less.

The Food and Drug Administration has been contemplating that strategy for at least six years as one way to make it easier for smokers to cut back, if not quit entirely. Less than two years ago, it authorized 22nd Century Group, a publicly traded plant biotech company based in Buffalo, New York, to advertise its proprietary low-nicotine cigarettes as modified-risk tobacco products.

Now, the first authorized cigarettes with 95% less nicotine than traditional smokes are coming to California, Florida, and Texas in early July, after a year of test-marketing in Illinois and Colorado. It’s part of an aggressive rollout by 22nd Century that, by year’s end, could bring its products to 18 states — markets that together account for more than half of U.S. cigarette sales.

But anti-smoking groups oppose greenlighting 22nd Century’s products. Instead, they urge federal regulators to expand on their original plan of setting a low-nicotine standard for all combustible cigarettes to make them minimally or nonaddictive. They expect the FDA to take the next step in that industrywide regulatory process as early as this fall.

“Unless and until there is a category-wide requirement that nicotine goes down to low, nonaddictive levels, this is not going to make a difference,” said Erika Sward, a spokesperson for the American Lung Association.

Major tobacco companies Altria, R.J. Reynolds, and ITG Brands did not respond to requests for comment.

Cigarette smoking is estimated to cause more than 480,000 deaths a year in the U.S., including from secondhand smoke, and contributes to tobacco use being the leading preventable cause of death nationally. In 2018, then-FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb wrote that setting a maximum nicotine level “could result in more than 8 million fewer tobacco-caused deaths through the end of the century – an undeniable public health benefit.”

The FDA reasoned that people would collectively smoke fewer cigarettes and have less exposure to the deadly toxins that are still present in low-nicotine cigarettes.

22nd Century says it used a patent-protected process to control nicotine biosynthesis in the tobacco plant, enabling it to create a pack of cigarettes with about as much nicotine as one Marlboro. It says generally that it uses “modern plant breeding technologies, including genetic engineering, gene-editing, and molecular breeding.”

Keeping 5% of the nicotine is enough to prevent smokers from seeking more to satisfy their cravings, said John Miller, president of 22nd Century’s smoking division.

“There’s just enough in there that your brain thinks it’s getting it, but it’s not,” Miller said. “That was really one of the reasons we got to these levels of nicotine, is because you don’t have that additional smoking.”

Miller said the low-nicotine cigarettes can help some smokers cut back or quit, perhaps in conjunction with a nicotine patch or gum, when they’ve tried and failed with other stop-smoking programs.

Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids President Matthew L. Myers supports the development of an industrywide low-nicotine standard, saying the concept would work only if consumers no longer had the alternative of a higher-nicotine cigarette.

“The concern with a product that’s still addictive, but delivers low levels of nicotine, in fact, is that consumers will smoke more because the evidence shows that somebody who’s addicted will smoke enough to satisfy their craving,” Myers said.

Both the FDA and anti-smoking groups cited studies that found lower levels of nicotine don’t prompt smokers to smoke more to reach the same nicotine levels. But those studies assumed smokers wouldn’t have a high-nicotine alternative, anti-smoking groups and researchers said.

Allowing low-nicotine cigarettes while conventional cigarettes remain available may be a public health detriment if they discourage smokers from quitting entirely or encourage others to start smoking because they think there’s a safe way to experiment with cigarettes, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and several health associations wrote in a letter urging the FDA to reverse its 22nd Century decision.

22nd Century’s cigarettes are still dangerous, and consumers must substantially cut back or quit smoking to get health advantages. But anti-smoking groups fear many smokers won’t understand that.

“If people are looking at this as a magic bullet and are still continuing their tobacco use, they are not doing anything to change their risk,” said Sward, of the lung association.

Anti-smoking groups particularly object to allowing 22nd Century to market menthol cigarettes even as the FDA is considering outlawing such cigarettes nationwide.

FDA spokesperson Abby Capobianco confirmed that 22nd Century has the only FDA-authorized low-nicotine cigarette but did not respond to requests for comment on the FDA’s plans for regulating nicotine in cigarettes.

California already outlaws menthol flavoring, and Miller said the company won’t challenge that state’s ban and won’t sell its menthol cigarettes in California.

But Miller hopes the company will eventually win an exemption from any federal ban, in part, he said, because more than half of menthol smokers are likely to switch to conventional cigarettes.

“That’s not what the FDA wants to happen,” Miller said. “They need an offramp for these menthol smokers and ours is obviously the natural.”

The company is expanding into California, Florida and Texas because of the nation-leading size of their smoking populations. It previously announced plans to also begin selling its very low-nicotine, or VLN, cigarettes this year in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, and it may move into 10 more states.

The company is prioritizing seven states that offer tax incentives for products the FDA has said reduce tobacco risk, believing its cigarettes will have a price advantage over others in Colorado, Connecticut, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, New Mexico and Utah. Miller said the company may lobby California lawmakers to add similar incentives as part of the state’s extensive efforts to discourage smoking, which still addicts 10% of its residents.

Miller declined to disclose the company’s market share from the two test states but said sales were above expectations.

“If we can get this to the level of, like, a nonalcoholic beer — you know, 3% to 5% of the category — it’s a game changer,” Miller said. “We know that there’s a latent demand in the market for this product.”

Promoting illegal car sideshows and street races in Long Beach, whether through social media, print, or group chats, could soon cost you up to $1,000 and six months in jail.

The Long Beach City Council on Tuesday voted to create a new ordinance that makes it illegal to encourage or advertise street takeovers, saying these exhibitions are an outstanding danger to the public and a nuisance to neighborhoods.

The item will come back to the dais as a draft prepared by the city’s attorney’s office, which would then be voted into law.

It will allow police to levy penalties on those they can prove promoted or encouraged people to attend the illegal exhibition, which often includes cars doing donuts and burnouts in public intersections ringed by crowds. Police will track promoters through testimony and social media. Promotion bans like this one already exist in other municipalities like San Jose and Alameda County.

It builds on a 2022 city law targeting those who attend these events, making it a misdemeanor for those within 200 feet of a street takeover. Tuesday’s vote also included an amendment that exempts accredited news reporters from the existing spectator ban.

The city’s northernmost 9th City Council District, where the proposal originated, continues to claim the majority of reported street races across Long Beach, with more instances reported there than other parts of the city combined.

Ninth District Councilmember Joni Ricks-Oddie said the law was a direct response to what her constituents experience regularly.

“Illegal street racing and sideshows remain some of the most dangerous public safety challenges in our city,” she said.

Between 2022 and 2023, the police received 349 calls about street racing or other exhibitions of speed — 210 of which were in Ricks-Oddie’s district that encompasses most of the city above South Street. When asked, police did not provide more up-to-date statistics.

Councilmember Tunua Thrash-Ntuk, whose district borders Rick-Oddie’s, said in the Longwood neighborhood, sideshows are a common occurrence on Susana Road, a street that borders unincorporated land and is next to an elementary school.

“Reckless driving is harmful for everyone,” she said. “It is unacceptable in areas that are highly utilized by children, and we must return our streets and neighborhoods to a state of normalcy.”

In the city’s plan to eliminate all vehicular deaths by 2026, commonly known as Vision Zero, a survey section found nearly a quarter of respondents listed traffic enforcement as the top priority. Ahead of the 2026 budget, respondents ranked public safety among the top three priorities for the city.

The city also plans to install three automated speeding ticket cameras in the 9th District, along Artesia Boulevard from Harbor Avenue to Butler Avenue; Atlantic Avenue from the L.A. River to Artesia Boulevard; and Long Beach Boulevard from Artesia Boulevard to 70th Street.

Long Beach is on track to have more than 50 traffic deaths this year.

Millions of Americans have shed pounds with help from drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound.

But people who take these drugs often experience unpleasant side effects.

"They lose weight, which is a positive thing," says Warren Yacawych of the University of Michigan, "but they experience such severe nausea and vomiting that patients stop treatment."

So at this year's Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, Yacawych and other researchers held a session to describe their efforts to understand and solve the side-effect problem.

The weight-loss products are called GLP-1 agonists. They work by mimicking a hormone that reduces appetite and slows digestion.

Yacawych and his colleagues wanted to know if they could tweak these drugs to suppress appetite without making people queasy.

The team focused on two areas in the brain stem where GLP-1 drugs have a big effect.

"The first is affectionately known as the brain stem's vomit center," Yacawych says. "It's naturally designed to detect any accidentally ingested toxin and coordinate the feeling of nausea and the vomit response."

The second area monitors food intake and tells people when they're full.

The team found a way to direct GLP-1 to the area involved in feeling full, while keeping the drug out of the vomit center.

When the researchers did this, the mice no longer felt sick. But they also didn't get thin — probably because there are specific cells in the vomit center that do not induce vomiting but are critical to weight loss.

"So it's very challenging," Yacawych says, "to be able to separate these side effects, like nausea, from GLP-1's intended effects, like weight loss."

A possible workaround came from a team led by Ernie Blevins of the University of Washington. They gave obese rats a low dose of a GLP-1 drug along with the hormone oxytocin, which is itself an appetite suppressant. That allowed the rats to lose weight without feeling sick.

Not just nausea

Another side effect of GLP-1 drugs is a decrease in thirst, which could be dangerous for people who are already losing lots of fluids from side effects like vomiting and diarrhea.

"If you're in that state of dehydration and you're not feeling thirsty to replace those fluids, that would be a problem," says Derek Daniels of the University at Buffalo.

To understand how GLP-1 drugs reduce thirst, Daniels and a team began studying the brains of rats. And they got lucky.

"We had a happy accident in the lab," Daniels says. "And the happy accident involved a rat called the Brattleboro rat."

Brattleboro rats are laboratory rodents with a genetic mutation that makes them thirsty nearly all the time. But the scientists discovered that these rats are also very sensitive to GLP-1 drugs, which drastically reduced their water consumption.

The team studied the rats' brains to see where GLP-1 was influencing thirst. That led them to several areas of the brain that appear to affect thirst but not appetite.

The discovery could help scientists preserve thirst by designing drugs that "target good places but not bad places," Daniels says.

Appetite and addiction

A team from the University of Virginia found that GLP-1 drugs are already targeting a brain area that plays a role in addiction as well as eating. It's a region involved in emotion and the reward system.

When the researchers delivered GLP-1 to this brain area in mice, it reduced their desire for "rewarding food, like a burger," says Ali D. Güler of the University of Virginia.

But the animals continued to eat healthy, nonrewarding foods, he says — a bit like people choosing a salad bar over dessert.

Identifying this brain area should help scientists find GLP-1 drugs that target the reward system while avoiding areas involved in appetite, Güler says. And that could lead to new treatments for alcoholism and other substance use disorders.

The finding also could explain the observation that people who take GLP-1 agonists tend to reduce their consumption of alcohol.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that found Texas' 2026 congressional redistricting plan pushed by President Donald Trump likely discriminates on the basis of race.

The order signed by Justice Samuel Alito will remain in place at least for the next few days while the court considers whether to allow the new map favorable to Republicans to be used in the midterm elections.

The court's conservative majority has blocked similar lower court rulings because they have come too close to elections.

The order came about an hour after the state called on the high court to intervene to avoid confusion as congressional primary elections approach in March. The justices have blocked past lower-court rulings in congressional redistricting cases, most recently in Alabama and Louisiana, that came several months before elections.

The order was signed by Alito because he is the justice who handles emergency appeals from Texas.

Texas redrew its congressional map in the summer as part of Trump's efforts to preserve a slim Republican majority in the House in next year's elections, touching off a nationwide redistricting battle. The new redistricting map was engineered to give Republicans five additional House seats, but a panel of federal judges in El Paso ruled 2-1 Tuesday that the civil rights groups that challenged the map on behalf of Black and Hispanic voters were likely to win their case.

If that ruling eventually holds, Texas could be forced to hold elections next year using the map drawn by the GOP-controlled Legislature in 2021 based on the 2020 census.

Texas was the first state to meet Trump's demands in what has become an expanding national battle over redistricting. Republicans drew the state's new map to give the GOP five additional seats, and Missouri and North Carolina followed with new maps adding an additional Republican seat each. To counter those moves, California voters approved a ballot initiative to give Democrats an additional five seats there.

The redrawn maps are facing court challenges in California, Missouri and North Carolina.

The Supreme Court is separately considering a case from Louisiana that could further limit race-based districts under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It's not entirely clear how the current round of redistricting would be affected by the outcome in the Louisiana case.

The fire that started on a cargo ship docked at the Port of Los Angeles is now "substantially contained," according to the Port of Los Angeles.

Authorities say fire crews and ship crew members are continuing to put out the fire.

LAFD captain Adam VanGerpen told LAist the cargo ship — "ONE Henry Hudson" — was moved to open waters, less than a mile from the port, to ensure the safety of those living in San Pedro and Wilmington, as well as port operations.

A shelter-in-place order for residents in San Pedro and Wilmington has been lifted, according to VanGerpen.

Authorities say all crew members on the ship are accounted for with no injuries reported.

At one point, more than 180 firefighters were fighting the fire, which was reported at 6:38 p.m. by crew onboard as an "electrical fire" that started below deck. An explosion was reported by authorities about an hour later.

A number of cargo bays contained some hazardous materials, VanGerpen said.

He said a number of containers are believed to be damaged, but the extent won't be known until the fire is fully contained.

"Many of these cargo containers are stacked one on top of another, and they were not able to get cranes in there to start removing these," he said.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.