● The State Mutual Life Assurance Company in Massachusetts says that smokers should be charged higher life insurance premiums because of death rates at all ages that are more than twice as great as for nonsmokers. The insurance company’s own study of the matter concluded that life expectancy differences​—over seven years for a 32-year-old man—​“are too large to be ignored . . . in individual life insurance underwriting and pricing.” More than 30 insurance companies offer lower rates to nonsmokers.

“It is clear that, on the average, a nonsmoker will live six years longer than a smoker, and eight years longer than a heavy smoker.”