Life Insurance For Tobacco Chewers
Tobacco and tobacco related products may be imbibed in a variety of ways. There's the obvious cigarette smoking, then there's cigars, pipes, electronic cigarettes, and tobacco chewing too.
If you don't partake in the smoking of cigarettes and cigars, perhaps you think you could be in for an easy ride when it comes to buying a life insurance policy. Maybe you think you'll be able to get insurance on the cheap.
Unfortunately, most life insurance companies will not and do not make any particular differentiation between cigarette smoking, cigar smoking, or any other type of tobacco related pleasures.
Find Out Your Tobacco Chewer Life Insurance Rates!
How Life Insurance Companies Tend to Rate Tobacco Usage
There are in general three categories of tobacco usage. Those are:
- Regular user – no matter if you smoke cigarettes, enjoy a pipe, partake in a cigar now and again, or chew tobacco, once your evaluation is complete, you will be classed the same as someone who smokes two packs of cigarettes each day, even if you only chew tobacco one time a month,
or enjoy a pipe on a Saturday afternoon in front of the television.
Regardless the type of life insurance policy you want, be that term, whole life or universal life, you as a tobacco “user” will be charged somewhere around 2 to 3 times as much as what a non-smoker would pay for the same life policy.
- Irregular users – many people simply enjoy a pipe once in a blue moon, or perhaps puff on a cigar on a special occasion such as a birthday or a wedding or something like that. Should they take a urine sample, they would for the most part test negative for nicotine. These people certainly
cannot be classed as regular “users” and so a number of life insurance companies would offer them a different policy to the one described above.
Some companies do not make any differentiation between chewing tobacco once a month and smoking 20 cigarettes every day. On the other hand, there are other companies such as MetLife (https://www.metlife.com/) or Prudential (www.prudential.com/) which will provide some slack and take the differences into consideration. To qualify for their best non tobacco rating you need to undertake a blood analysis test and that blood test must not show positive for nicotine.
- Non Usage of Tobacco Related Products – some companies will provide you with a classification of “non-smoker” if you've already given up for a year or longer – that includes any tobacco consumption, not just cigarette smoking. Normally in this case you would qualify for a standard non tobacco rated policy, but with a few companies, you may even qualify for something better than standard.
Can I Get Life Insurance If I Chew Tobacco?
Yes, you can. And you can even get some good rates depending on your category usage.
So, to sum up, the price of life insurance for tobacco chewers can be low providing that the habit is irregular or indeed, providing that the habit is stopped altogether. Otherwise, for most life insurance companies, chewing tobacco will be viewed as one and the same as smoking one or two packs of cigarettes every day of the month.
Tobacco users will pay as much as three times what non-users pay for.
