As a recreational marijuana smoker, you may be able to qualify at non-smoking life insurance premiums. Some companies, but not all, will issue MJ users at non-smoking rates as long as the amount of marijuana being smoked weekly is below a certain weight threshold.

Why did/do marijuana users get smoking premiums?

Marijuana useage used to get smoker ratings from all companies in Canada. The objection to this from consumers is that marijuana users don’t get cancer at the same rate as a pack-a-day smoker – and that is likely true. However marijuana use is correlated with other things that can increase premiums. In very small percentages, it can be associated with other medical conditions such as schitzophrenia and in the past, with criminal elements. These factors, while very small in number, created mortality similiar to smokers. Rather than explaining that to consumers, life insurance companies just found it easier to put them in the same category as smokers and it was ‘close enough’. So not technically true, but it reasonably adjusted for the mortality and there were just fewer questions.

Some years ago some companies started offering marijuana users life insruance at non-smoking premiums. While this isn’t supported by the statistics (they should probably be charged smoking premiums as they were before), you can imagine that marijuana users felt this was a more just decision, plus, hey, a lot cheaper life insurance. That decision created some market pressure in the industry, so now a variety of life insurance companies will offer marijuana users at non-smoker costs – again, subject to a minimal, recreational level of use weekly.  

How do you know if you qualify at non-smoker premiums?

 It’s not easy to shop it out as the companies that do this change over time, and various companies can have different qualification levels. However if you smoke marijuana occassionally, it’s worth a call to us to have us do some investigation to see if we can qualify you at non-smoker premiums.

Just smoking? What about vaping or edibles?

 Importantly, we are using the term ‘smoke’ generally when in fact this is true for all types of marijuana use including edibles and vaping. It’s the use that matters, not the smoking.

Also important, if you use tobacco with your marijuana, then you will fall into smoker premiums as tobacco IS smoking by almost every life insurance company definition.

Lastly, if there are other related factors, this can impact the ability to get non-smoker premiums. For example if you use marijuana for medical reasons, then the medical reasons can impact your rating with life insurance as well, even if the marijuana use on it’s own doesn’t.