Old Smokes Homes

Seattlest vividly remembers when we were about five years old, sitting in our aunt's kitchen watching our grandmother dragging off a filterless cigarette, blowing columns of smoke out her nose like a possessed hell-horse (seriously, that woman had nostrils of equine proportions). We thought smoking was ipso facto with being older--a rite you become entitled to once you pass a mysterious life milestone that at the time was well beyond our grasp. Our perspective on smoking changed rather dramatically in the decades that followed, but it doesn't change the fact that some old people hate the smoking ban. Wheeling 25 feet outside for a toke is not high on their list of enjoyable activities, it seems.

At first we thought nothing but ill of the Seattle Times for making "news" out of this, or at least trying to fan the flames of something that might smell like news. Here fishy, fishy. Then we thought that the idea of allowing smoking in nursing homes was ridiculous to begin with. Followed not that swiftly by: waitaminute, these people are in nursing homes. If they're smoking now, they're not going to quit. Most everyone there is going to die sooner than anyone currently not in a nursing home. Sweet Hephaistos, let these people have their indoor smoking rooms and puff away their remaining days in peace.

Seattlest smells something else though--not news, and not a smoldering Kool Ultra Light. We smell a trend, people, and you know what that means. (Very little, it turns out, give us two of anything and we'll call it a trend.) Though mostly an urban legend of yore, some are now taking on more earnest financial analyses of the prospect of retirees spending their waning years on cruise ships, instead of in retirement homes. Even Snopes cites two retirees in support of this once-myth. That's two. We also know that cruise ships, while generally bending to public pressure to be more smoke-free (some are now offering entirely smoke-free ships), still tend to offer at least sequestered smoking areas and smoking cabins.

Not tethered to the state-sponsored laws banning smoking in public areas, cruise ships may be the perfect one-two punch for the hordes of baby boomers staring down rising retirement home costs and cancer stick-hating legislation. If anyone ever decides to market this, all Seattlest asks is ten percent and lifetime free cruises. Wait, we hate cruises. Oh well.