MADD - Archives

The best way to prevent someone from driving drunk is to make a plan for a sober designated driver, and make sure everyone agrees to it ahead of time. If you are faced with a situation where someone who’s impaired is trying to drive, here are some tips on how to stop them:

Be as non-confrontational as possible.
Suggest alternate ways of getting to their destination — a cab, a sober driver, public transportation.
Remember that the person you are talking to is impaired — talk a bit more slowly and explain things more fully than if you were speaking to a sober person.
Explain that you don’t want them to drive because you care and you don’t want them to hurt themselves or others.
Suggest that they sleep over.
Enlist a friend to help you or to act as moral support — it’s more difficult to say “no” to two (or three or four) people than one.
If possible, get the person’s keys. It is far easier to persuade the potential driver when you hold this leverage.
If all else fails, call law enforcement. It’s better to have a friend arrested than injured or killed.

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A Season to Celebrate
By Jan Withers | December 20, 2012 | Filed in: General

Happy Holidays!

This holiday season, I am celebrating my wonderful family and friends, and the incredible progress we've made together this year. For the first time in history, drunk driving deaths have fallen below 10,000, and we could not have done that without your help—your support, your donations, your time spent volunteering, your emails and phone calls to legislators, your participation in Walk Like MADD and other events, and even your Facebook shares and re-tweets!

To show my thanks, I want to share with you a special Holiday video message.

Thanks to you, each year we save more lives, serve more victims and bring awareness to the dangers of drunk driving and underage drinking.

We know that there is still much work to be done and we won’t stop until there are no more drunk driving deaths. I hope that you’ll stand with us until we achieve that goal.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for all that you do for MADD, and happy holidays!

Warmly,

Jan Withers
MADD National President

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New Data Shows Continued Decrease in Underage Drinking
By MADD | December 20, 2012 | Filed in: Power of Parents , Underage Drinking

Data recently released by Monitoring the Future, one of the leading surveys on teen drug use, shows good news in the fight against underage drinking. For the first time since the survey began in 1991, fewer than 30% of 8th graders had drunk underage. Since we launched the Power of Parents® program in 2010, drinking among 8th graders has declined by 19% and drinking among 10th graders has declined by seven percent.

The news is not all good, however. Drinking among 12th graders went up in the 2012 survey. More than half of all high school seniors (54%) have been drunk and over half of those have been drunk in the past month. In addition, almost one out of every four 12th graders reported binge drinking in the past two weeks.

This shows the need to have not just one talk with your children about alcohol, but rather to have an ongoing conversation. As your child grows, they will know more, have different questions and face more difficult pressures. MADD has research based tools available that can help get these lifesaving conversations started. Use our Power of Parents handbook to talk with you teens about not drinking alcohol until they are 21 and never getting in the car with someone who has been drinking, or visit the parent section of our website to get more tips and expert resources for talking with your kids about alcohol.

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Study Shows Effects of Teen Alcohol Use
By MADD | December 19, 2012 | Filed in: Power of Parents , Underage Drinking

A study recently published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research shows that teens who drink underage show signs of breakdown in the brain's wiring system.

The brain has two broad types of tissue, known as gray matter and white matter. The gray matter can be seen as the brain's information-processing centers, while the white matter is like the wiring connecting those centers. Using brain scans of 92 teenagers, researchers found that kids who regularly drank showed negative changes in the brain's white matter over 18 months. The impacts of those changes in white matter can prevent parts of the brain from talking to each other as effectively, hurting memory, attention, and mental processing speed.

With regular, repeated, heavy use throughout adolescence and young adulthood, these effects may become more noticeable and consequential. You can read more about the study here.

Fortunately, parents can have a strong influence on whether your teens drink — nearly three out of four kids say their parents are the leading influence on their decisions about drinking. We encourage parents take advantage of the holiday break, to talk with their teens about alcohol. Having intentional and ongoing conversations with your teen about alcohol can be lifesaving, but we also know it can be difficult. That’s why we created Power of Parents®— a research based program that has been shown to reduce underage drinking when you read the parent handbook and talk with your teen about drinking. You can download the parent handbook here.

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Winter 2012 MADDvocate
By MADD | December 17, 2012 | Filed in: Drunk Driving , General , Underage Drinking , Victim Services

The Winter issue of MADDvocate is available. Read the latest issue of our online magazine that is helping survivors survive.