How Smoking Marijuana Affects Life Insurance Policies

If you smoke cannabis and are looking to obtain life insurance, you can probably find a company that won’t look down on you for smoking. However, you will need to look through a ton of companies in order to find the best deal. Almost eighty percent of the 148 underwriters who were looked over by reinsurer Munich Re at the Association of Home Office Underwriters annual conference stated that their company definitely includes cannabis-use when deciding coverage and pricing.

However, out of those eighty percent, almost thirty percent include cannabis-smokers as nonsmokers, which might allow them benefits of people who do not smoke. Another big question from insurers is how often someone smokes marijuana is also taken into consideration when taking someone’s policy into consideration. For instance, Prudential will still provide nonsmoking rates to someone who smokes marijuana three times a week, but if that person smokes five to six times a week, he or she will need to pay more. Someone who smokes every day, though, would not be given the option of policy at all, according to vice president of life underwriting at Prudential’s individual life insurance business, Thomas Farrell.

At MetLife, anybody who smokes cannabis less than once a week is a nonsmoker, according to Meghan Lantier, a representative of the company. For life insurers, smoking marijuana is still a concern the same way as drinking alcohol every day is, and reasonably so, accounting to vice president of underwriting and medical at Munich Re, Bill Moore.

“The more you have, the higher the risk is because you’re more exposed to things that could cause death,” he added. “Do they smoke and drive, have they had infractions, are they flying an airplane while using marijuana? Those are all things a carrier would look at and price those risks.”