Sometimes Treading Water Is Better Than Swimming

Radley Balko:

Mothers Against Drunk Driving was enormously successful at attaching a social stigma to drunk driving. Since MADD began its various public relations pushes to raise awareness in the 1980s, DWI deaths plummeted, until about the late 1990s. But then the numbers began to level off. It seemed likely that in a country of 300 million people, the figures had fallen to about as low as they were going to get. But rather than declare victory, MADD expanded its mission, and began taking on underage drinking, happy hour specials, alcohol advertising, and other booze-related issues beyond just DWI. Even the organization’s founder eventually came around to say that MADD had outlived its original mission, and become merely an anti-alcohol group.