MADD TACKLES NEXT BATTLE IN WAR ON IMPAIRED DRIVING

Advocacy group “switching strategies” to campaign against driving while high

The tunes blaring as he keeps beating on the steering wheel, a guy pulls up to a drive-thru window. Clearly, he has the munchies — except he seemingly can’t quite remember what he’s doing, what he wants, or how he got there.

“What was the question?” he asks in response to the request for his order.

If it sounds familiar, you’ve probably seen one of the new ads by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Canada.

At this time of year, MADD is best known for its red ribbon campaign, geared toward drivers during the holiday party season to plan a safe ride home — then and always. And it’s still running that promotion, but the group is also, as CEO Andrew Murie put it recently, “switching strategies.”

Through three decades of awareness campaigns, advocacy and sharing the heart-wrenching stories of the loved ones lost and left behind, MADD and others have made inroads on the drunk driving front. But these days, Murie concedes it feel like two steps forward, one step back.

Rates of drunk driving have come down, more so in other parts of Canada than in Saskatchewan, but even here there’s been a dent. The last triple digit year for alcohol-related driving fatalities was 1987, when SGI recorded 123 deaths. Last year, 57 people died in a dangerous mix of alcohol and vehicles — each one a tragedy, especially as I think of the recent campaign showing the family photos of some of those victims.

Impaired drivers annually cut a far wider swath than killers. In this province, 165 people died in homicides from 2011 to 2015 versus 290 alcohol-related driving deaths.

But Murie and MADD know that at the same time we’ve finally got many drivers thinking twice about having one for the road, they fear too many aren’t having sober second thoughts about drugged driving — especially with pot legalization looming next summer.

“A lot of young people don’t think it’s as impairing as alcohol, which is problematic,” Murie told me this week. “And the second piece is, some of them think they drive better high — which is a real misstatement for sure.”

He says MADD’s research has shown drug-impaired driving is where alcohol-impaired driving was decades ago. More often people are driving under the influence of both alcohol and drugs than alcohol alone. And while opiates, cocaine and meth factor into that mix, more often it’s marijuana.

And so, that’s the drive behind MADD’s new campaign, which isn’t just about pot. But, “we think it’s going to get a lot worse when legalization comes in, if there isn’t some messaging that happens between now and July 1,” Murie adds. Washington and Colorado, which both went through pot legalization, saw “upsurges” in their impaired driving numbers. “It’s reasonable to expect we won’t be any different.”

If there’s any room for optimism, Murie says that with the benefit of experience — knowing what combination of education campaigns and laws work — the learning curve shouldn’t be nearly as steep this time around. “The alcohol campaign took better than 30 years to get the numbers where they are now. We’re hoping we can do the drug stuff in a lot less time.”

I hope he’s right; a lot of lives are counting on it.

Like the dopey driver at the drive-thru window, Murie notes driving under the influence of pot can have the impairing effect of slowing things down, including the driver, which can have dire results.

And the sluggish pace on planning and preparing for July 1 also carries consequences.

While MADD is trying to get ahead with its messaging, he worries some provinces, including Saskatchewan and Manitoba, are lagging behind others in preparing for pot legalization day. In September, when Saskatchewan was still surveying the public on pot, Ontario was firming up plans for government-run dispensaries.

He gives Saskatchewan kudos for its zero-tolerance policy brought in Jan. 1 for drivers age 21 or younger who are impaired by drugs or alcohol.

But with legalization looming — and especially in a province that still can’t kick the drunk driving habit — it’s time to stop coasting.

As Murie says, “We’ve got a lot to do as a society before July 1.”

A lot of young people don’t think it’s as impairing as alcohol, which is problematic.