Last week, FRONTLINE premiered Chasing Heroin — an intense, two-hour documentary examining how America’s heroin and opioid crisis came to be, and how communities across the country are experimenting with radical new approaches to the drug problem in the face of more than 27,000 heroin and prescription opioid overdose deaths each year.

The response to the documentary was massive. Hundreds of you shared your personal stories involving addiction with us.

Others took to Facebook and Twitter to weigh in on everything from big pharma’s push to popularize opioid painkillers, to how the changing racial makeup of heroin users has impacted the national conversation around illegal drugs.

We’ll continue the conversation on Friday, March 4, at 2 p.m. EST / 11 a.m. PST, with a Google Hangout featuring the filmmaker behind Chasing Heroin, Marcela Gaviria, and three people featured in the documentary:

• Mikel Kowalcyk, a social worker and outreach coordinator for Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, which gives police officers the discretion to either arrest low-level drug offenders, or divert them to counseling, social services or treatment.
• Lt. Leslie Mills of the Washington State Department of Corrections, who also works to implement LEAD.
• Jordan Zulauf, a recovering addict who lost his girlfriend to a heroin overdose in 2012.

Please join our Google Hangout here, where you can leave a question in advance. You can also watch it live or replay it afterwards in the below window.

Patrice Taddonio, Senior Digital Writer, FRONTLINE

Twitter:

@ptaddonio