Has MADD Become Drunk With Power?

Some think the famous anti-drunk driving group may have jumped the shark:

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is suffering from mission creep. A victim of its own success, the non-profit group is now pursuing Prohibitionist anti-alcohol policies – such as calling for alcohol detectors in all cars – instead of focusing on its original goal of reducing drunk driving deaths.

“The public needs to realize that MADD isn’t the same group it was 20 years ago,” says American Beverage Institute (ABI) Managing Director Sarah Longwell.

MADD founder Candy Lightner agrees. The non-profit group she started in 1980 after her daughter was killed by a drunk driver “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.”

There's more at the link. Without question MADD has done a lot of good and has saved lives. But like many successful organizations it becomes easy to think so highly of your success that you start looking for other worlds to conquer and sometimes forget what the original mission was. Becoming an alcohol scold isn't going to make people more receptive to their message.