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Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, is a controversial, non-profit organization in the United States and other countries. In the 1980s, MADD had success in changing public attitudes and laws regarding driving under the influence (DUI). While MADD still regards itself as a victims' rights organization, critics contend that it has shifted its original goals from preventing drunk driving fatalities to preventing any drinking and driving. Even more controversially, MADD has moved to take positions on other alcohol-related issues with no clear link to drunk driving. Some, including the group's founder, Candy Lightner, refer to the current organization as being far removed from its original goals of preventing intoxicated driving and instead, is promoting a neo-prohibitionist agenda.

Common criticisms of the organization deem it as using junk science to further its goals, and that it is neo-prohibitionist, ageist, and in favor of the creation of a nanny state — all under the pretense of preventing deaths due to drunk driving.

Agenda

Generally the group favors:

  • Making drunk driving laws more strict in a variety of areas, including an illegal blood alcohol content of .08 or lower and using sanctions for DUI offenders, including mandatory jail sentences, treatment for alcoholism and other alcohol abuse issues, ignition interlock devices, and license suspensions
  • Helping victims of drunk driving
  • A ban on drinking before the age of 21 with no exceptions for religious, health or other reasons
  • Increases in taxes levied on alcoholic beverages
  • Limiting the operating hours of businesses licensed to sell alcohol

History

Candy Lightner was the organizer and founding president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). In 1980, Ms. Lightner’s 13-year-old daughter, Cari, was killed by a drunken hit-and-run driver as she walked down a suburban street in California. "I promised myself on the day of Cari’s death that I would fight to make this needless homicide count for something positive in the years ahead," Candy Lightner later wrote. A 1983 television movie about Lightner resulted in publicity for the group, which grew rapidly. The group had its greatest success with the imposition of a 1984 federal law that required states to raise the minimum legal age for purchase and possession (but not the drinking age) to 21 or lose federal highway funding. After the United States Supreme Court upheld the law in the 1987 case of South Dakota v. Dole, every state complied.

In 1988, a drunk driver traveling the wrong way on Interstate 71 in Kentucky caused a head-on collision with a school bus. 27 persons died and dozens more were injured in the ensuing fire. The Carrollton bus disaster (1988) was one of the worst in U.S. history. In the aftermath, several parents of the victims became actively involved in MADD, and one became its national president. In 1990, MADD introduced its "20 by 2000" plan to reduce the proportion of traffic fatalities that are alcohol-related 20 percent by the year 2000. This goal was accomplished three years early, in 1997.

In 1991, MADD released its first "Rating the States" report, grading the states in their progress again drunk driving. "Rating the States" has been released four times since then.

In 1999, MADD’s National Board of Directors unanimously voted to change the organization’s mission statement to include the prevention of underage drinking, whether or not the drinking was associated with driving.

Since the group's inception, thousands of anti-drunk driving laws have been passed. MADD also helped popularize the use of "designated drivers" although it originally opposed the practice because it permits non-drivers to consume alcohol.

More recently, MADD was heavily involved in lobbying to reduce the legal limit for blood alcohol from BAC .10 to BAC .08. In 2000, this standard was passed by Congress and by 2005, every state had an illegal .08 BAC limit. The corporation's franchisee in Canada (MADD Canada) has recently called for a maximum legal BAC of .05. MADD has also been successful in lobbying for "administrative license suspension" laws mandating the confiscation and immediate suspension by police of the driver's licenses of suspects arrested for drunk driving. These laws have been almost universally adopted by all states but have been criticized on grounds of lack of due process, presumption of guilt, and double jeopardy.

MADD has successfully advocated, and continues to advocate, for the enactment of laws for even more strict and severe punishment of offenders of laws against driving under the influence, as well as laws against drinking and driving.

Declines in drunk driving

The death rate from alcohol related traffic accidents has dramatically declined since the 1970s, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). According to NHTSA, alcohol related deaths have declined from 26,173 in 1982 to 16,694 in 2004. While some of this decline may be attributable to improvements in car safety and emergency medicine, MADD's supporters claim the group's efforts have brought about this decline, because alcohol-related fatalities declined much more significantly than non-alcohol-related fatalities. Declining death rates in alcohol-related car accidents may have saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the past 25 years. The declining number of alcohol-related car accident deaths found by NHTSA is particulary dramatic because total U.S. population and the number of drivers has increased substantially during the past 23 years.

Controversy

MADD has generated much controversy in recent years, especially over its forceful lobbying against drinking by those, including legal adults, under the age of 21.

Paternalism

Some believe that MADD's policies amount to unwarranted paternalism, the view that the state can pass laws to prevent people from harming themselves; as a result, MADD is considered as a pre-eminent organization in favor of a so-called "nanny state" by some. In every state in the United States, anyone who has reached the age of 18 is legally an adult and can vote, join the military, contract real estate, and be punished as an adult under the law. Of course, preventing operation of a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol isn't strictly paternalism, since drivers of all ages impaired by alcohol could kill and hurt others as well as themselves.

Youth rights groups and social libertarians also believe that MADD's zealous support of a minimum drinking age is ageism and that it ignores the fact that a substantial amount of the drivers detained for drunk driving are 21 years old or over. Also, they question the effectiveness and relevance of MADD's insistence on total abstinence from alcohol, believing that such policies actually encourages underage and reckless drinking, since that policy makes it almost impossible to assist and educate younger people in making reasonable judgments about alcohol and its consumption. Also, they believe that it encourages some younger people to drink, to show their contempt for a law they feel is unjust, since in most other countries, 18-year olds, and even younger people, can consume alcohol legally, and that it would be safer to have them drinking legally in supervised environments.

MADD and other advocates of the 21-year old minimum drinking age claim that the harm of underage consumption of alcohol stems from their belief that the brain does not stop developing until the early 20s. Until that age, they claim, alcohol consumption retards brain development and harms the parts of the brain responsible for judgment and memory development. However, evidence of this is based on studies of rats and severe alcohol abusers rather than social drinkers. MADD also ignores the fact that many other countries, including Canada and Mexico have their legal drinking age set at 18 and that no government has endorsed the theory that alcohol consumption retards brain development. Critics of MADD see this as an example of junk science.

Supervision paradox

In the United States, legal exemptions for alcohol consumption under the guidance of an older family member can be somewhat paradoxical; since age 18 is the start of adulthood, there is a three-year gap when an adult might be living away from home, but unable to purchase alcoholic beverages. In every state in the United States, individuals over the age of 18 are considered to have reached the age of majority.

To this point, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that the minimum drinking age law has saved 22,798 lives since 1975 by reducing the number of fatalities involving underage drinking drivers. MADD frequently cites this statistic as "proof" that a high drinking age saves lives, however its critics have pointed out that similar fatalities among the same age group in Canada have dropped by a similar proportion despite the fact that Canada's drinking age remains at 18 or 19 (depending on the province).

Practical arguments

Drinking ages
Some argue that it's not pragmatic to require such a high age limit. These arguments exist for all sorts of reasons. For instance, it's quite possible that perhaps even more lives could be saved if the age limit were raised even higher. Others point out that the age limit perhaps gets in the way of the social process young people need to go through in order to learn to drink responsibly. By the age of 21, parents exert far less influence over their children; by often not being legally permitted to purchase alcohol for their minor children, it can be argued that adults lose precious years to teach their children how to drink responsibly.

Those who take the pragmatist approach to opposing strict under-21 laws may also feel enforcing BAC limits and promoting public transportation are better ways to prevent drunk driving. Some even dispute that the laws have done any good at all. People who argue using these grounds will often point to other countries where alcohol laws are much more liberal, yet fatalities related to drinking are less frequent.

Blood alcohol content
It can be argued that low BAC limits and high age limits on alcohol consumption is pragmatic. For one, the United States is a much more automobile-centric society than most, if not all, countries. Outside of a few metropolitan areas, such as Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., public transportation use is rare and often impractical. Because of settlement patterns in the United States, combined with an ingrained automobile culture, public transportation is unlikely to ever become as widespread as it is in Europe. Therefore, to some proponents of stricter consumption laws, it makes sense to limit consumption.

It can also be argued that the government does not own the citizens; that in a free country, the citizens would decide what to eat and drink, and that it is not the fault of the discrimination victims that the government imposes laws that penalize non-use of motor vehicles (such as plowing snow off streets onto sidewalks, forcing developers to add parking lots and pass the cost on to tenants who don't even have cars, building roads without sidewalks and building busy intersections without crosswalk lights). Outvoted discrimination victims cannot be blamed, for example, if many other people have a love affair with their automobiles.

It can also be argued that if the higher drinking age were to be struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, state lawmakers would scramble to pass tougher drunk driving laws that would possibly save more lives, but they prefer for obvious reasons ("I can drive better drunk than they can sober.") to impose the drinking age on somebody else rather than impose tougher drunk driving laws upon themselves.

Operating hours and availability
MADD has generally taken the position that a decrease in the availability of alcohol will lead to a decrease in consumption, and therefor a decrease in drunk driving. For example when Canadian officials took action to allow more privatized liquor stores, the organization responded by stating that "increased alcohol availability and alcohol density lead to increased alcohol harm, including impaired driving."

In a press release titled "Fewer Liquor Stores in Los Angeles Equals Reduced Crime", MADD implies that fewer liquor stores with shorter operating hours resulted in an improvement in the quality of life in LA. The press release made no mention of operating motor vehicles.

In Okaloosa County, Florida, local MADD activists lobbied to reduce the operating hours of bars, requiring them to close at 2:00 AM.* A local bar owner responded, "I think its dangerous, because you're talking about putting people on the road at 2 a.m. and people are going to drink no matter what time you close an establishment and you'd be putting everyone out on the road at two."

Empirical research has revealed that later closing hours are associated with lower alcohol-related traffic crashes and fatalities *.

Concerns regarding the efficacy of reducing alcohol availability in order to reduce drunk driving focus on two themes: Does a decrease in availability really lead to a decrease in consumption, and does a decrease in convenience lead to an increase drunk driving? It is widely believed that during the United States prohibition of alcohol, consumption of the substance actually increased. Likewise, banning liquor licenses in residential areas may encourage a determined consumer to drive to a bar, instead of walking to a neighborhood bar or pub, especially if liquor stores are closed.

MADD's mission

Some critics claim that MADD has shifted in emphasis from preventing DUI deaths and injuries to preventing underage alcohol use, and that this is undermining the organization's original goal, because MADD's leadership has stated that it's more important to stop drinking than it is to stop drunk driving fatalities. For example, the president of MADD, Glynn Byrch, wrote in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post:

Taking away a teenager's car keys and replacing them with a beer may prevent death and injury on the road, but it sends a dangerous message to teenagers that it's okay to break the law.*

In 2005, the president of Middlebury College, John M. McCardell, Jr. wrote in the New York Times that "the 21-year-old drinking age is bad social policy and terrible law" that has made the college drinking problem far worse. *

Conflict of interest criticism

MADD promotes the use of "victim impact panels" (VIPs), where judges require DWI offenders to pay MADD a fee to hear victims or relatives of victims of drunk driving crashes relate their stories. Some states in the United States, such as Massachusetts, permit victims of all crimes, including drunk driving accidents, to give "victim impact statements" prior to sentencing so that judges and prosecutors can consider the impact on victims in deciding on an appropriate sentence to recommend or impose. The presentations are often emotional, detailed, and graphic, and focus on the tragic negative consequences of DWI and alcohol-related crashes. However, a New Mexico study suggested that the VIPs' confrontational approaches are ineffective in the treatment of alcohol problems, and that the use of VIPs actually increased DWI recidivism in that state. Some studies have shown that permitting victims to make statements and to give testimony is psychologically beneficial to them and aids in their recovery and in their satisfaction with the criminal justice system. [http://www.johnhoward.ab.ca/PUB/C53.htm

Financial mismanagement allegations

In 1994, Money magazine reported that telemarketers raised over $38 million for MADD, keeping nearly half of it in fees. This relationship no longer exists. Overall, MADD reports that it spends 17% of its budget on fundraising, which is below average for an advocacy organization that is heavily dependent on many individual contributions. However, the American Institute of Philanthropy and others note that MADD categorizes much of its fundraising expenses as "educational expenses." The American Institute of Philanthropy has given MADD poor grades for its high bureaucratic and fundraising costs (MADD Money. Investigative report, K5 News, Seattle, WA. See In December 2001, [http://www.worth.com Worth magazine listed MADD as one of its "100 best charities". However, MADD currently has the lowest (poorest) evaluation score among its peer charities, according to Charity Navigator.It has the highest proportion of funds going to expenses and the lowest proportion of funds being spent on actual programs.

Allegations of avarice

Non-profit organizations typically permit their chapters to keep most of the money they raise. For example, Remove Intoxicated Drivers (RID) chapters get to keep 90% of all funds they raise. In contrast, MADD's corporate office claims immediate ownership of all money raised by all its chapters. Thus, after raising $129,000 locally and turning it all over as MADD demands, the Las Vegas chapter received a check from the national office for $1.29 as its share. MADD's "focus is on greed," said the chapter President, who reported "I've never seen such bloodsuckers!" (MADD Money. Investigative report, K5 News, Seattle, WA. See *).

Criticisms of the motives of MADD's critics

MADD sometimes imputes ulterior and sinister motives to its critics. For example, it has charged that “opponents of sobriety checkpoints tend to be those who drink and drive frequently and are concerned about being caught.” Because some law enforcement organizations believe that roving patrols are more effective in apprehending impaired drivers and are a more efficient use of limited resources, opposition to such laws may be based on legitimate public policy concerns.

Candy Lightner's departure

Lightner left MADD in the 1980s, and has since gone on to criticize the group as "neo-prohibitionist." Lightner stated that MADD "has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned … I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving" (Bresnahan, S. MADD struggles to remain relevant. Washington Times, August 6, 2002; Dresty, John. Neo-prohibition. The Chronicle, May 12, 2005).

In popular culture

  • Drunks Against Mad Mothers, or DAMM, is a farcical counter-movement to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. It is usually represented by t-shirts. The notoriety of the expression may have come from James Hetfield of Metallica, who was once pictured in such a t-shirt.

  • In Robert Ashley's musical duet, The Man in the Green Pants, (Sam Ashley, Robert's son) taunts police by calling them "Motherf*ckers Against Drunk Driving."

Source

  • MADD Money. Investigative report., K5 News, Seattle, Washington.

External links

Other Viewpoints

Non-profit organizations | Alcohol | Drunk driving

Mothers Against Drunk Driving

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Mothers Against Drunk Driving".

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