Again I find myself in Tokyo. Again I have that line from “One Night in Bangkok” popping up in my brain “Whaddya mean? Ya seen one crowded, polluted, stinking town…”, but I digress. One thing has been bothering me since I first visited this ocean of lights and faces - why do the cigarette vending machines, that are everywhere, never have any matches or lighters for sale? I don’t smoke, at least usually, but it bugs me every time I see them. Although it would be reasonable to assume that there is a reason preventing this from happening - such as a law or tradition, I already know better and from experience my general inclination is that since it’s something I would consider convinient it just hasn’t occured to any vending machine company, nor do they want to change their ways.
More of a smoker quirk than a Japanese quirk, I think.
Here in Germany there are a lot of cigarette vending machines too (about one vending machine per 35 smokers), and they don’t have matches or lighters either.
My WAGs as a nonsmoker:
running out of matches or lighter fluid is less of a problem for smokers than running out of cigarettes is - you can always ask someone else, even a stranger, to light your cigarette, but asking for a cigarette would be much more of an imposition.
people who want to cut down on their smoking might limit their cigarette stash, not throw away their matches, so when they succumb again it’s cigarettes they run short of, not matches or lighters.
Possibly the cost of adding a whole seperate ‘compartment’ to hold the lighters/matches would not be worth the cost of modification to the machine. I know when I go to a rundown little bar and they have one of these machines, they sometimes have a little box of matches on the top of the machine.
Also, people tend to run out of cigarettes more often than running out of butane.
I guess I’m mentally contrasting with observing my friends buy cigarettes from gas stations and convenience stores in the US and having them get asked “Would you like matches?” every single time (more than often the answer is yes, lighters get lost, and I’d imagine it’s a lot more frustrating to have cigarettes and no light then a light and no cigarettes)
Free matches with your smokes seems to be an American thing. My experience (in the UK, at least) has been that matches are sold, usually for 10 or 20 pence, rather than given away.
My WAG is that the “sin taxes” on cigarettes further complicate the vending machine issue. The lighters wouldn’t be subject to the same taxes, so you’d have a two-tier price structure for the vendors or distributors to have to deal with. Unless the taxes on vending-machine cigs are pre-paid, in which case I got nuthin’. Except that it’s still a hassle to modify the machines, stock the goods, for a low-turnover and thus lower-profit item…
Many bars and restaurants in Tokyo will give you matches or the loan of a lighter (and in some cases, even a free lighter; at a 7-Eleven store in Nishi-Azabu once, my room-mate was given a free lighter after buying a 280 yen pack of cigarettes).
As mentioned above, selling matches or lighters anonymously is probably deemed somewhat irresponsible.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen cigarette vending machines in Canada (maybe I’m just never in the right place or maybe they’re illegal now - since I don’t smoke I don’t know and don’t care), but I’m sure when I used to see them the majority didn’t have matches or lighters.
Hmm…I’d have to disagree, at least as far as I recall from the mid-1960’s-mid '70s, in Sask, Man & B.C.: I distinctly recall seeing a 1cent matchbook dispenser on cigarette machines (mostly in restaurants, as I was a kid at the time and didn’t frequent bars). IIRC, there was a separate slot for pennies, and a sign or label saying “Matches 1¢.”
On a semi-related topic, it seems that old cigarette machines are being reborn as art-o-mats. Cool idea.
Maybe the liability is a factor? It would only take one drunk whacko to carelessly toss the ‘free match’ under a schoolbus to kill a bunch of people. And what’s that gonna cost you?
Wait…do American cigarette vending machines have lighters/matches? I used to smoke a lot, but I’ve never noticed them dispensing fire along with the smokes. Granted, I’ve only seen the vending machines in pool halls and bars where you’d walk up to the bartender and ask for a book of matches, but still…
That’s what I find odd. Vending machines: Beer, sure. Razors, sure. Food, sure. Cigarettes, sure! NO FIRE FOR YOU! :dubious: I mean of course a lot of places will have fire, but that’s hardly the point - a lot of places sell cigarettes as well, but there are still vending machines for them.
The only smoker (unfortunately, non-japanese) I know in Japan gave me a very philosophical answer to this question: "Remember that cafe near work that closed at 3 but would close around 1 every day because every single day they would run out of food? Remember how you asked why don’t they just buy more food or change the closing time? My answer was ‘because that’s the way things are, they have no reason to change’. Well, same reason. "
Maybe that’s just it. That’s just the way it’s done?
It would cost you about the same as it would cost you if you were a shop or bar and sold or gave away the same match, which is to say almost certainly nothing. Litigious as Western society may be, it is still not true to say that just because you sold the ordinary household item that some whacko uses to cause hurt or damage you are liable.
Back in the late 50s, one cigarette machine in a restaraunt my family used to frequent did have matches. This was teh kind of machine with pull knobs beneath various brands of smokes. The last pull knob dispensed a book of matches for free. I recall this because I got in serious trouble for dispensing myself a book – not lighting them, not even picking them out of the machine, just dispensing them.
This was near Cleveland Ohio.
I took a Canadian to a pub in Sydney, and she freaked out at seeing a “real, live” ciggy machine. She assured me they were illegal in Canada. And that was about six years ago.