Mothers Against Drunk Driving is suing Mothers Against Illegal Aliens for using “Mothers Against” in their name. Their C&D letter said “MADD cannot be associated with your organization and the use of “Mothers Against” gives a strong implication of a relationship with MADD.”

Not really. As the writer of this blog discovered, a quick Google of “Mothers Against” returns hundreds of “Mothers Against” organizations.  Why they went after this one is anyone’s guess.

M.A.D.D, like every other nanny organization, is a fountain of made up numbers and fake statistics. Their favorite, of course, is the number of drivers killed in “alcohol related accidents.” Note the careful phrasing. We’re not talking drunk drivers here, we’re talking alcohol related. If the driver swallowed his mouthwash before going to work and blew .01 on a breathalyser, that’s alcohol related, even though no sane person would consider that drunk. If a driver hits a drunk pedestrian, that’s alcohol related. If the driver is stone cold sober but his passenger had a few, that’s an alcohol related accident.

I’d suggest that they change their name. Just shorten it by one letter, to M.A.D: Mothers Against Drinking. They are no longer going after drivers who are actually drunk. Their goal is prohibition, one baby step at a time.

At one point, they used the motto “Impairment starts with the first drink.” They’ve dropped that, removing it entirely from their web site. Perhaps they realized they were jumping the gun by a few years. But a few quotes from their literature shows where they’re really coming from.

”Promoting ‘responsible drinking and driving’ is like promoting ‘responsible drive-by shootings’.”—MADD’s Driven Magazine, Fall, 1997

Forget limits on BAC. It’s just not acceptable to drink and drive, period” – Madd President Wendy Hamilton.

“Lowering the legal [arrest] standard will be a deterrent for light drinkers as well as heavy drinkers. There is no safe blood alcohol level, and for that reason, responsible drinking and driving means no drinking and driving.”—Catherine Prescott, former President, MADD.

“…we do not want to overlook the casual drinker. If you choose to drink, you should never drive. We will not tolerate drinking and driving-period.”—MADD President, Karolyn Nunnallee.

Source: this informative, very ugly site.

A well done breakdown of how M.A.D.D lies with numbers can be found here. And you know you can trust it, because it’s published by Modern Drunkard Magazine.