Whether you're an advisor occupying a lofty suite on Wall Street or working with elderly clients in a small Main Street office, the opioid crisis might seem like a distant problem.
But for millions of Americans, the rising levels of addiction, dependence and overdoses hit very close to home, and advisors should be taking notice of the problem, said Bill McManus, director of strategic markets at Hartford Funds.
Moreover, advisors may be able to recognize the signs of addiction in their clients and their clients’ families, he said.
“Financial advisors have a unique lens into their clients’ lives due to the personal level of their conversations and the relationships they build,” said McManus. “They have the ability to affect their clients’ lives and behavior, but the may not know how to handle these situations.”
The opioid crisis is no longer just relegated to opium dens and dingy hovels packed with heroin users, he said. The problem accelerated as health-care providers began prescribing synthetic opioid painkillers in the 1990s under the assumption that they were not as addictive as heroin and other recreational street drugs, he said.
Today, two million Americans are addicted to opioid drugs, exposing hundreds of millions of relatives, friends, neighbors and employers to the crisis.
“It’s had an impact on national life expectancy,” said McManus. “After decades of life expectancy going up, over the last few years it’s gone down almost entirely due to this issue.”
McManus cites statistics from the Centers for Disease Control that show up to 29 percent of patients prescribed pain killers misuse them—and that 80 percent of heroin users first abused an opioid medication.
Stronger opioids, like Fentanyl, continue to make their way into the black market, causing a dramatic rise in overdose deaths. While the CDC recorded just over 47,000 opioid-caused deaths in 2014, that number jumped to more than 72,000 in 2017.
McManus offers five pieces of advice for helping clients deal with opioid abuse—whether it is themselves or a family problem who is battling the addiction.