Bono Mack leads personal crusade against prescription drug abuse

Rep. Mary Bono Mack on Thursday will use her seat atop the Energy and Commerce Committee's commerce panel to draw attention to an issue that has directly affected her own family.

The California Republican is holding a massive hearing — no fewer than 17 witnesses are invited, including federal officials and two governors — on prescription drug abuse, the second leading cause of accidental death in the United States. Oxycodone and other legal opiates often serve as "bridge" drugs to illegal drugs for young people because they're widely available and falsely believed to be safe, even though they're highly addictive.

Abuse of legal drugs leads to perhaps as many as 30,000 deaths a year, especially among children and young adults. Bono Mack's own son, Chesare, came close to suffering a similar fate when he became addicted to OxyContin as a teenager after the death of his father, musician and congressman Sonny Bono.

"The reason both (Chesare) and I wanted to start talking publicly was my son started watching more and more of his friends get hooked on prescription pills, and that's when he really realized this is an epidemic," she said. "The two of us did."

Bono Mack tells The Hill that the hearing is mainly aimed at raising awareness on Capitol Hill of "this epidemic that is largely overlooked" rather than pushing specific legislation. Still, the congresswoman has a bipartisan bill instructing the Food and Drug Administration to limit controlled-release oxycodone pills for severe pain only.

While Bono Mack's panel doesn't have jurisdiction over the FDA, it can get involved when legal products are diverted from their intended purpose. The panel will hear from Drug Enforcement Administration chief Michele Leonhart and Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Among the questions they'll be asked, according to an internal memo, are whether it makes sense to create prescription drug buy-back programs that don't involve law enforcement at the forefront. The DEA's first annual national prescription drug "Take-Back" campaign last year collected more than 242,000 pounds of medicines.

Bono Mack said her main concern is with so-called pill mills and illegal distribution of legal drugs, but she raised questions about physicians' prescription practices as well.

"If we're taking back tons and tons of these pills," she said, "it seems like we're overprescribing tons and tons of the pills, then."

Also testifying: Govs. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Steve Beshear (D-Ky.), who are both dealing with the prescription drug abuse epidemic in a different way. Scott has favored law enforcement-led efforts to combat illegal pill distributors, while Beshear is a champion of a national prescription monitoring program that has raised privacy concerns.

The panel will also hear from former addicts and their families, who will describe the human and emotional toll wrought by prescription drug abuse.

"I don't know of any other disease that truly is a family, where if one person has it, the whole family has it," Bono Mack. "The whole suffers from the effects of the addiction. And when you take the number of people who are addicted and then think about the whole family dynamic, think about how many people are affected in this country, it's sort of a lot of walking wounded folks out there."