Roundup: Too Much Candy for Kids Leads to Violent Adults; Prescription Drug Deaths Outnumber Car Crash Fatalities in Some States; and More

• Startling news from the Centers for Disease Control that in 16 states, the number of people who die from prescription drug overdoses outnumbers the number who die in car accidents.
• Simple Explanation Department: Reseachers in Britain have used longitudinal data to show that children who eat too much candy are more likely to be violent later in life. For further reading: the American Journal of Preventive Medicine had a special 2008 issue on youth violence prevention.

• Washington D.C.'s Time Dollar Youth Court -- the District's only juvenile diversion program and a national model - was closed September 30th when city funds were cut. Check out the video at right to see what the youth in the program said about it.
• Heroin use among suburban teens was featured in The New York Times; meanwhile, a new study redefined binge drinking for adolescents. The study attempts to take into account the physiological differences between teens and adults.
• The Office of Juvenile Justice and Deqlinquency Prevention (OJJDP) released a new manual for local communities to use to reduce Disproportionate Minority Confinement (DMC) -- follow the link for an issue brief and instructions on how to get the manual -- and the Annie E. Casey Foundation issued a report on its Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI).
• Low-income African-American youth engage in fewer risky behaviors than low-income white youth, according to one of eight reports on "transitioning youth" released by the Urban Institute. (Hat tips to the Policy for Results blog for this item and the previous bullet.)
• Protectyouth.org, which supports legalization and regulation of marijuana, makes a provocative case that youth volunteers, who've been used successfully to curb illegal tobacco sales to minors, could be used in a similar way to successfully help regulate the marijuana market, if it were legalized.
• California's Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) was the target of a recent editorial advocating in favor of transferring juveniles to county probation and eliminating the DJJ.
• The U.S. Department of Justice launched its Facebook page this week. It's also now on MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube.
• Liz Ryan of the Campaign for Youth Justice was interviewed recently on the tragedy of youth in adult prisons. In related news, there was a thoughtful article in Governing on the "age of responsibility" -- including culpability for criminal acts. In the reader comments section, I found an interesting link to a Scientific American article that suggests that the long-held assumption that teen risk-taking behavior is correlated with immature brain development may be false. In fact, the brain tissue of risk-taking teens appears to be more mature than that of other teens. I'd be curious to know what other experts think about this.
• Humor: Faux-Congresspersons on The Onion comedy news channel are shown struggling to come up with a cool name for an anti-meth initiative.

Trainings

• Do you provide adolescent substance abuse treatment? The Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment (NIATx) is sponsoring an October 13th webinar to help you reduce client wait time by reducing paperwork.