The message is the same, but the scope has broadened this holiday season for MADD – Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
With recreational marijuana now legal, MADD’s annual red ribbon campaign to discourage impaired driving includes pot. That’s according to MADD local spokesperson Amy St. Amour.
“It’s changed but it’s really just umbrellaed itself,” she explains. “So we recognize that driving impaired includes driving either impaired by alcohol or impaired by drug. That can be cannabis, that can be an opioid, could be a prescription, could be anything.”
The red ribbon campaign also promotes MADD’s Campaign 9-1-1.
“If you’re out on the road and you see somebody swerving in and out of traffic,” St. Amour says, “missing stop signs or traffic signals, just driving erratically, missing turns, turning suddenly, things like that, they’re aware that they can call 9-1-1.”
The goal is to have a traffic stop initiated, before that erratic driver causes a crash.