deaths in america and remove the stigma from drug addiction joining me now for more on this is meghan ralston harm reduction manager with the drug policy alliance meghan welcome. thanks thanks for joining us i'd like to start out by playing as a short clip of philip seymour hoffman talking about his addiction back in two thousand and six check that. you said you don't drink no i don't in fact you would into rehab at a fairly early age yeah i did i did i went. i got sober. twenty two years old. so this was drugs or alcohol older both good as are all that stuff. little. and why did jude ceasar stop you panics the a panic it was. i was twenty two when i got pounded for my life really what was. your most radical reason article mojave and post was about how we can prevent overdose deaths like kaufman's how do we do this. you know the death of philip seymour hoffman is just a failure and a tragedy on so many levels and you know you talked a minute before about stigma and then criminalization of substance abuse and addiction and all of those things are major factors but i mean really it's as simple