Anti-Alcohol Advocates Upset by "Beer Summit"

President Barack Obama's "beer summit" between a Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Massachusetts police officer James Crowley in the White House Rose Garden is getting criticism from a different quarter: Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

The Delaware chapter of MADD thinks that Obama, Gates and Crowley drinking beer isn't the best message to send to young people.

"It's a well-known fact that young people tend to mimic the actions of the adults," MADD Delaware Chapter President Nancy Raynor told a local radio station.

That statement has drawn the ire of the American Beverage Institute, which released a public statement that said MADD has become "very neo-prohibitionist."

"MADD is no longer an organization that opposes drunk driving, but an anti-alcohol group that has been hijacked by the modern day temperance movement," ABI managing director Sarah Longwell said. "That someone in a position of leadership at MADD would criticize President Obama for simply drinking beer, illustrates the neoprohibitionist mentality that now dominates the group."

Raynor told Politico.com, a leading political news site, that she's upset by the brouhaha over her comments.

"I am trying to do the right thing and this is what happens," she said.

For another view that won't make alcohol prevention professionals happy, see this story from Reason Magazine.