mr. botticelli -- how did we get to this point? i do not want any doctor to leave a patient in pain, serious pain, you know? it is a terrible affliction. first, you do no harm. how do we draw that line between pain management and just avalanche ofle prescriptions that has led to an epidemic of addiction in america, with presumably the best of intentions? >> i agree. ofn you look at the roots the epidemic, it is really about the overprescribing of addictive pain medication. >> why? how did we get there? doctors are not stupid people. >> i think that doctors were given a significant amount of misinformation from pharmaceutical companies and medical professionals that these were not addictive medications. scant scientific evidence, there was a full-court press to educate physicians in saying that the medications were not very addictive. had a nobletime, we goal -- we have to do a better job at pain treatment in the united states. there are a lot of people with significant pain. you have these complements of a full-court press to treat

mr. michael botticelli. [ applause ] >> thank you, governor, i really appreciate that introduction. it's really a pleasure for me to be here. you might know that the bulk of my career was spent working in state government in massachusetts, so despite the fact that i'm a fed now my heart still lies at the state level because i really do believe that -- [ technical difficulties ] -- that's happening. and i want to just start off by thanking the lieutenant governor for the introduction and -- [ technical difficulties ] -- what we are facing here in terms of just the significant issues around addiction. -- to this issue. you know, we have not seen 2014 data show that we've had about 24,000 people die as a result of opioids. you know, that translates to 78 people a day are dying from this. and what we have seen is obviously just kind of no geographic boundaries, no race boundaries, no economic boundaries to this epidemic. and it's challenged us because it is hitting parts of the -- haven't seen this kind of mortality related to this. you know, we've also seen a number of other consequenc