Clicking Through a Sprite in Flex/Actionscript

I ran into a problem recently where I wanted to add a rectangle to the stage but still wanted users to be able to click through it. Here’s a solution I found:

private function addClickThroughSprite():void
	{
	overlay = new Sprite();
	overlay.graphics.beginFill(0xFF0000,0.2);
	overlay.graphics.drawRect(0,0,width,height);
	overlay.graphics.endFill();
	overlay.hitArea = new Sprite();
	rawChildren.addChild(overlay);
	}

Basically you set the sprite hit area to a blank sprite, which exposes the components beneath. If anyone has a better solution feel free to share it.