I think what MADD did was sick. I don't care what you're trying to educate kids about, you don't make them believe their friend is dead, and then go, "Psych! Just kidding! Don't drink and drive!" That is just cruel and abhorrent.
I teach high school, I know how resistant kids can be at that age. I agree that sometimes you have to go the extra mile to shock their complacency.
Having an assembly where they get to meet kids paralyzed and otherwise crippled by drunk driving? A good idea.
Displaying the wreck of a car driven drunk and crashed? A good idea.
Showing them gory pictures or movies of drunk driving crashes? A good idea.
Emotionally abusive psychological manipulation? Really unacceptable.
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Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.
(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)
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