[A Jovial Cad]

Excellent article.

MADD has fallen into the routine that many "movement" organizations do after they encounter nationwide success: instead of declaring victory and going home, they expand their focus to encompass matters that have little or nothing to do with their founding purpose, and in the process they distort and pervert the nobility of the cause for which they originally fought.

It was a good thing that MADD fought for, and won, tougher penalties for DUI offenders during the eighties; but now they have turned into a modern day version of Carrie Nation fanatics, and have no more credibility with sensible people than the NAACP or the ACLU. Their current efforts are, indeed, an attempt to "back door" another eighteenth amendment by legislative, as opposed to constitutional, means, and they are succeeding.

They've become one of those organizations--such as the aforementioned NAACP--which it becomes impossible to criticize without touching off the indignant howling of the politically correct, left and right. Critics are likened to folks who must "support" drunk driving if they take on MADD--just as those whom criticize the NAACP's cynical race-baiting are dismissed as "bigots" out of hand.

What's worse, they've got their hands in the federal till, and are using taxpayer dollars to subsidize their advocacy for what indeed is "neo-prohibition." It's a shabby coda to a once legitimate organization.

[ellery]

But it's mothers!!! For the CHIIIIIILLLLDDDRRREEEENNN!

Bump!

[TheCrusader]

MADD provides an outlet for grieving, angry mothers to get their pound of flesh. They have a good side and a bad side. Trying to prevent unnecessary deaths is good, but it's being overdone now and is turning into more of an anti-alcohol platform than anything else. Some states have gone so overboard to appease these nags that they've lowered the drunk-driving blood alcohol level to something akin to being legally drunk if you had a piece of rum cake before driving.

[CSM]

Back door prohibition ping.

[TKDietz]

"MADD's biggest victory on this front was a nationwide blood-alcohol threshold of .08, down from .10. But when two-thirds of alcohol-related traffic fatalities involve blood-alcohol levels of .14 and above, and the average fatal accident occurs at .17, this move doesn't make much sense."

snip

"Sure enough, after former President Clinton signed .08 into law in 2000, drunk driving fatalities began to inch upward again — after two decades of decline..."

When the blood alcohol content level for DWI was higher, people ad a pretty good idea how many beers they could drink before they exceeded the limit, whether it was three, four, or whatever, depending on their sex and weight. Now people get popped when they've hardly had anything to drink. Dropping the level from .08% to .10% did not save lives, in fact, drunk driving fatalities went up. I can't help but wonder if people are seeing the legal levels as being so low that they aren't even trying to moderate their alcohol intake before driving. Maybe a lot of people figure they are going to be over the limit anyway so they might as well really be over the limit.

[elkfersupper]

Excellent article.

Seems MADD is finally getting some journalistic inquisition.

Here's another recent adversarial article.

It's USA Today, or I would post it in full.

MADD enters 25th year with change on its mind

Interesting quote:

"You're impaired the moment you have any antihistamine in your system."