dr. russell. the prevailing wisdom in the medical community is that you treat drug and alcohol addiction as a disease. whitney houston had the money to get the best treatment. she didn't want it. she went back and back and back and finally, her body gave out. so you say, what? if you are addicted or on that road, what's your advice to people? >> this is going to sound simple. but unless you are going to put steel bars between a person and an addiction, which by the way is not a bad idea for someone with an intractable addiction, then what begins as a personal choice ends with a personal choice, which is why rehab is so ineffective, you can't talk someone into quitting, but when they decide haywant to, they need help dealing-- >>> who about whitney houston who, decides i'm not going to quit. what about them? do we have a responsibility to them at all? >> i think the only thing you can do is literally separate them from the substance. >> this is a public health issue. you don't criminalize behavior.

dr. russell rosenberg and he says their methodology was flawed and control groups compare apples and oranges. what would you like to respond to that? >> did you ask dr. rosenberg how recently he's been taking money from the sleeping pill manufacturers? >> i'm asking you this question first. >> i think that's the answer. >> so you're saying your data isn't flawed? >> no, our data isn't flawed. it has limitations like all studies do but it's not flawed in the way he described. >> let's talk about a few other things in your research, a few other results. some might see them as weaknesses. one is that people taking sleeping pills were not asked why they were prescribed the drug. you did not control for psych attic disorders and also the control group didn't necessarily suffer from sleeping problems. so it kind of begs the question, could there be underlying conditions here that might increase the risk of early death? >> well, we controlled for all of the underlying conditions that we could control for. but the emotional data is confidential under the laws of the state we were studying in. but we