Mary Bono has left the halls of Congress, but she’s still winning with her efforts to stop the misuse of both prescription and illegal drugs. For Bono, who came to government service through marriage to the late entertainer and politician Sonny Bono, the advocacy has a personal root.
“I have been affected by substance abuse disorders in my family my whole life. And that runs on both sides and through marriages. The important thing here is it can happen to anybody. I was a sitting member of Congress when it happened in my family, which is pretty mind-blowing when you think about it…[I’m] crusading on this, and here it is happening in my own family,” says Bono.
Bono, the co-founder and chair of Mothers for Awareness and Prevention of Drug Abuse, wants to see a focus on solutions from lawmakers. Overdose deaths in the U.S. have fallen to numbers last seen in 2017 and 2018, Bono says, citing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the increase in fentanyl threatens to “wash out” some of the progress.
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With a greater presence of fentanyl in the drug supply, “everything [has] changed because there’s no longer time for experimentation,” Bono says. “‘One pill can kill’ is a [Drug Enforcement Administration] slogan, and it’s true.” But rather than focus on what people shouldn’t do, Bono says we must look at “What are we doing right? And let’s double down on those efforts because there’s a very positive story to tell, too.”
Bono tells “Conversations on Health Care” hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter that “I’m the daughter of an ear, nose and throat surgeon … and I try to keep balance in mind when we try to go after these policies. I’m very optimistic that we’ll get this right.”
