A Santa Clarita Valley addiction expert spoke out Thursday about the national addiction epidemic on the heels of the release of startling statistics from the U.S. Surgeon General.

The report “Facing Addiction in America: The Surgeon General’s Report on Alcohol, Drugs and Health,”  states 1-in-7 people will face substance addiction, and 78 people die every day from an opioid overdose.

Video by UMass Medical School.

Click here for the executive summary of the report. Click here for the full report.

“I don’t know anybody who doesn’t know somebody affected by drug abuse, and I think the most important thing that I heard today, which is what we’ve been saying forever, is addiction is a brain disorder,” said Cary Quashen, founder of Action Family Counseling, “it’s not a moral, ethical character defect.”

Quashen spoke out to NBC on Thursday about the crisis, and the need to spread awareness about the resources out there to fight addiction. Perhaps even more trouble in the Surgeon General’s groundbreaking report — the first of its kind to take on addiction — is that only about 1-in-5 in need of treatment are actually getting help.

Almost 22.5 million people reported use of an illegal drug in the prior year, according to the report. More than 20 million people have substance use disorders, and 12.5 million Americans reported misusing prescription pain relievers in the past year.

“I think that it’s something that I have been seeing over the past few years,” said Quashen, who runs a well-known treatment program locally and deals with the problem firsthand. “I was watching it explode — now the federal government and the surgeon general has determined an epidemic, so it’s very frightening — and if we don’t do something about it we’re going to lose even more lives.”