How to insure your pot-smoking client

The key is understanding your clients’ current marijuana use and if it is prescribed by a physician. For example, I recently had a daily pot smoker prescribed marijuana for insomnia and Prudential Life gave him a preferred nonsmoker risk class. Other carriers, like Banner Life, would probably decline or highly rate this type of client. While it seems to be easy to possibly insure someone with a marijuana prescription, what about those who use it recreationally?

The top carriers I consider lenient (as of press time) with insuring marijuana smokers are:

1. Prudential Life: If proposed insured is prescribed Marijuana for health reasons other than mental health then best rates are possible. If not prescribed and uses less than twice per month with negative THC test result, standard nonsmoker rates are possible.
2. Met Life: If proposed insured uses four times or less per month, then they could secure a possible best offer and no rating. Proposed insured must test negative for THC. Daily use would be a minimum four table rating.
3. Mutual of Omaha: Standard non-tobacco rates up to weekly use, if lab indicates more frequency, smoker rates will apply.
4. Lincoln Life: Standard non-smoker rates up to two times per week. Two table rates for three to four times per week and decline for daily use.
5. AIG: No rating for two times per year or less, other use will be rated as smoker.

Carriers that are not as lenient currently are Banner Life, Fidelity, Genworth, Reliastar, Protective and Transamerica.

As more consumers who use marijuana are shopping for life insurance, the industry and, specifically, the underwriting guidelines will have to take a look at how consumers use marijuana. There are plenty of options to consume pot without inhaling carcinogens from combustion of the plant itself. Most consumers assume marijuana is consumed by lighting a joint or smoking a bowl. However, there are other, non-smoking ways to ingest marijuana, such as:

• Vaporizing: Today, consumers are using marijuana by vaporizing the plant and/or using the concentrated version without combusting the drug.
• Edibles: Marijuana is not like your grandad’s reefer. Consuming marijuana could be in liquid or food form called an “edible.”

I agree with Prudential, a company that, in the past few years, started offering non-smoker rates for consumers who use an electronic cigarette but not a lit one. Well the same theory, in my opinion, should hold true for the pot smoker not lighting the pot but vaporizing it. What about the consumer who likes to eat the pot brownies instead of smoking the marijuana? I think they too are less of a risk than the guy smoking a doobie every weekend.

I also wonder how the insurance industry views someone using pot in my home state of Indiana, which is a big no no, versus the same proposed insured living in Washington State? Is there is less risk to the carrier for the resident of Washington State because marijuana is legal there?

I think, ultimately, this is an ever-changing underwriting category with all major life insurance carriers.  

There is no question that marijuana is widely used in our country and that most consumers who use it also want life insurance at affordable rates. Prior to the last decade, all pot users were classified as a cigarette smoker, whether the consumer used it once that year or daily, they were either rated as a smoker or outright declined. In 2015, however, there are companies that want the risk, that see the value of the segment and are willing to insure such clients. With proper understanding of the landscape, along with proper planning and underwriting, there is no reason the informed advisor can’t provide multiple options to a marijuana user looking for life insurance.