In the News

NB Liquor, MADD team up
Times & Transcript
By Nick Moore
July 29, 2010

FREDERICTON —As Premier Shawn Graham rang in booze sales at a capital city liquor store yesterday, he asked customers for spare change to support programs sponsored by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

Graham himself was on hand at the NB Liquor store to confirm $200,000 in funding from the Crown corporation over the next two years for MADD.

NB Liquor will also hand over an additional $162,000 to MADD through in store donation programs, as well as revenue worth 50 per cent of all reusable bag sales.

The money will help fund several campaigns by MADD, including an anti-drunk driving video presentations to be shown at high schools across the province.

Andy Murie, MADD Canada's CEO, said the 42-minute video production includes three different scenarios faced by teens and the choices they make about whether to drink and drive. Some of the teen's decisions end up being wise, while the other decisions end up being fatal.

Murie said such MADD presentations were shown to about 1.1 million Canadian high school students last year.

Murie said feedback received three months after the fact from those young people showed positive results in teens deciding not to drink and drive, particularly in drivers who'd only had a license for less than a year.

"It's exactly the group we wanted to get to," he said.

Murie said the video also showed positive results in teenage girls, another key target group for the presentation. He said females had the "power of persuasion" to convince their male friends not to drive drunk, while also protecting themselves from being a passenger in a drunk driver's vehicle.

The summer months have already been particularly tragic on local roadways, with alcohol playing a factor. Caledonia RCMP have responded to three separate fatal collisions in the last few months which have collectively claimed the lives of five people.

The drivers in all three cases were speeding and impaired by alcohol and none of the five people killed were wearing seat-belts.

On May 29, three Riverview teens died and two were injured when they crashed on Route 905 in Forest Glen.

On June 18, a Sussex man was killed when he crashed his vehicle on Route 890 in Cornhill.

On June 27, a 51-year-old woman lost control of her vehicle on Route 126 in Canaan Station, just north of Moncton.

Premier Graham said the provincial government and NB Liquor had a responsibility to give organizations such as MADD the tools they needed in educating people about the dangers of driving drunk.

In April, new legislation was introduced in the province to extend driver's licence suspensions for those who blew so-called "warning" levels on breathalyzer tests.

Previously, if a breathalyzer test came back in the "warning" level bracket (a blood alcohol concentration of between 0.05 and 0.08 per cent) that person's driver's licence was suspended for 24 hours. The new legislation now extends that suspension to seven days.

Prior to the new legislation being introduced, MADD placed New Brunswick second to last for drunk driving laws, giving the province a D grade in its annual December report ranking provincial and territorial impaired driving laws.