Radley Balko has an excellent article up at FoxNews.com about our favorite neo-prohibitionist organization, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. We’ve heard most of the arguments before — the most important one being that MADD has moved beyond its original mission of strengthening the incredibly flimsy drunk driving laws of the late ’70s and early ’80s to undermining the criminal protections of the citizenry. From a civil libertarian point of view, this is incredibly distressing and cannot be mentioned enough.

Balko explains that MADD has become a defacto government agency, receiving millions of dollars in state and federal funding, not to mention having a “quasi official relationship” with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and local municipalities, which can force DWI offenders to participate in MADD-sponsored alchohol recovery groups. I know from experience that universities do this as well.

When I was a freshman living in the dorms, I was written up five times for drinking. The University, deciding that I was a threat to the roadways — what with my non-existent drivers license or car — told me that I would have to perform 20 hours of community service at the local chapter of MADD. For 20 terrible, mind-numbing hours I sat in that MADD office, stuffing envelopes, listening to Toby Keith warble from the radio, and avoiding the stink eye I received from the high school girl volunteer when I went outside to smoke. While working there, I was privy to all sorts of documents. Surprise surprise! Most of the documents had little to do with drunk driving, focusing instead on an abstinence-only style approach to teaching high school kids about alcohol. There were also a number of documents concerning the dangers of marijuana cigarettes.

The money quote from Balko’s piece comes from Candy Lightner, the original founder of MADD:

[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.

Indeed. I wonder what she thinks of the current leadership.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 6th, 2005 at 14:38 by Tyler and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.