I really do think for the vast majority of cases, doctors didn't think they were doing anything wrong - they were doing what was being recommended at the time, and many times people were able to take these prescription opioids and not have a problem with it. But what we do know is that if we take these drugs long-term, dependency develops quickly, within as little as a week. What we all have to realize is that these pills are chemical cousins of heroin - one is an illegal opioid and one is legal, but they are relatives.

There seems is predominantly a white person's drug addiction epidemic, so that's why you see white people in our film, Warning: This Drug May Kill You.

We are having a public health response to this epidemic of prescription opioids. We are looking at treatment options, there are drugs being made available for treatments, and we aren't just throwing people in prison. So this is a very different response than the traditional criminal justice response that we have had to past drug epidemics.

Addiction is a brain disease - this isn't a moral failing - and we have got to stop looking at it that way.

In 1999, Purdue Pharma the maker of OxyContin went on a massive marketing campaign. Back then, prescription opioids were only used in extreme cases - post surgery, end of life care, cancer pain. We use a clip from an ad in the film where they had a doctor saying, "Less than 1 percent of people who use prescription opioid long-term will become addicted" - that changed the mindset of physicians across the country.

Life expectancy for middle-aged white women has dropped dramatically over the past decade. Researchers didn't understand what was going on and so they were studying it and then very recently they realized it is driven by opioids. Why is that? They say now that it is because women are more likely to see a doctor for pain.

It is unacceptable that the way we have treated people who have become addicted in the past is by throwing them in prison. It's appropriate that we're responding now by trying to get people the treatment they so desperately need. The racial divide here is absolutely unacceptable, and we have to do much better for all people who are addicted whether they are white, black, brown, any race - the humane way to respond to addiction is in a public health fashion and by getting people the help they need.