Billboards give Texas motorists the dire warning: "Drink. Drive. Go to Jail."
Defense attorney MimiCoffey has added a controversial spin on a billboard of her own. "Drink, drive - go to jail. Another government lie."
In an era when Mothers Against Drunk Driving has brought intense pressure to crack down on intoxicated motorists, Ms. Coffey is one of the few people publicly criticizing what she says are excesses in such campaigns.
"It's an atmosphere of terror," said the Fort Worth lawyer who specializes in DWI cases. "Responsible social drinkers know the moment that they're pulled over that they are probably going to jail, even though they're not violating the law. The highway signs are telling them they will."
Ms. Coffey said she wants the Texas Department of Transportation, which created the slogan she appropriated, and other crusaders to stop putting out propaganda. Too many people have been convinced that a drink or two with dinner is a one-way ticket to jail, she said.
Richard Alpert, chief of the misdemeanor division in the Tarrant County district attorney's office, said it's absurd to believe than anyone could misunderstand the Transportation Department's slogan.
"I really don't think that any citizen of this state is confused about what driving while intoxicated is," he said. "I've never met anyone who thinks that you have a drink, get in a car and drive, and you're breaking the law."
Ms. Coffey insists that her controversial sign, a few blocks from her office on State Highway 121 near downtown Fort Worth, tells the truth, unlike the competing ones sponsored by the state, she says.
She's not alone
She previously posted a billboard asking the rhetorical question: "Who said responsible social drinking is illegal?"
Local MADD officials have received several phone calls and e-mails complaining about her sign since it was installed a couple of months ago. The local leadership said that no one other than Ms. Coffey, who ran unsuccessfully for the Legislature in 2002, has been so aggressive publicly in attacking drunken-driving enforcement.
The MADD officials say they don't believe that the billboards will fool anyone into thinking that drunken driving is acceptable.
"It raises awareness, which we think is good," said Mary Kardell, executive director of MADD's Metroplex chapter. "It's like the old rule that any press is good press."
Although she said that some will misunderstand her message, Ms. Coffey insists that she's not encouraging or condoning drunken driving or even dismissing all the efforts of MADD and other like-minded groups.
"I'm not trying to be the MADD Antichrist," she said.
Ms. Coffey says the crusade by police and civic groups unnecessarily scares people and is part of an effort to discourage alcohol consumption under any circumstances.
Radley Balko, a policy analyst with the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., has researched what's described as the neoprohibitionist movement and agrees with Ms. Coffey's argument.
"All advocacy groups reach a point where they become a bureaucracy instead of an advocacy group," he said. "They lose sight of their original mission."
He said that a critical indication of a change in goals is the use of language. MADD and other groups are no longer targeting drunken drivers. Instead, they are out to get people who are "drinking and driving" - a broader term applying to people who aren't necessarily violating any laws.
Zero tolerance?
In his report "Back Door to Prohibition," Mr. Balko cited numerous cases in which government officials and crusaders against drunken driving have said that very small amounts of alcohol - or, in some cases, any amount - is unacceptable when driving. In the last few years, most states, including Texas, have lowered the drunken-driving threshold from 0.10 percent blood alcohol level to .08 percent. Several officials in other states have recently proposed lowering it even further.
In New Mexico, one legislator tried to pass a bill requiring all new vehicles to come equipped with devices that would prevent someone from turning on the ignition if they were drunk.
MADD has even received public criticism from an unlikely person. Candy Lightner, who founded the organization after her 13-year-old daughter was killed by a drunken driver, has recently said she thinks the group is pushing a prohibitionist agenda instead of focusing on its core mission.
John Moulden, president of the National Commission Against Drunk Driving, said that he doesn't see alcohol as inherently evil and that neither do most members of groups lobbying against drunken driving.
"Are there some people within the organizations that have [prohibitionist] points of view? Probably," said Mr. Moulden, who was an adviser to the early leadership of MADD. "That's certainly not the official view of any of these organizations."
MADD officials said the only broader alcohol restrictions they seek concern underage drinking. They said research shows that people who start drinking at a young age are more likely to become alcoholics and therefore are much more likely to drive drunk.
Although the number of drunken-driving fatalities has dropped by 40 percent since MADD was formed in 1980, that number has slowly increased in the last couple of years.
Mr. Alpert said Ms. Coffey's crusade is particularly disturbing since Texas leads the nation in drunken-driving fatalities, and Tarrant and Dallas counties lead the state. Dramatic slogans such as "Drink. Drive. Go to Jail" are supposed to show that the state is serious about saving lives, he said.
Political pressure?
An aggressive campaign "is an attempt to try to stem the tide of fatalities we have in Texas," Mr. Alpert said.
He said he would support technology in cars that would detect whether someone was legally drunk before turning on the ignition. That might be one of the few ways to continue lowering the DWI fatality rates, since jail time isn't persuading many offenders not to drive drunk.
Jess Paul, an Indianapolis lawyer and dean of the National College for DUI Defense Inc., which trains lawyers to defend drunken-driving cases, said political pressure is so intense that few in authority would dare challenge stricter DWI laws.
"The fact that you don't hear elected officials and you don't hear appointed officials on both sides of the debate proves the point," he said. "They're afraid to come out and have a healthy debate."
E-mail jmosier@dallasnews.com |
