All around the world vending machines are disappearing…
        The machine on the bottom was one the Antis loved to complain about with its knobs “deliberately set for short little children to get cigarettes.” Actually the knobs were down there because the old machinery was gravity fed, and the knobs were DEFINITELY **NOT** child friendly: you practically got a hernia pulling on them. Twice at bars I witnessed adult smokers, who evidently had never used one of those machines before, go up to the bartender and complain they were broken, simply because they hadn’t pulled hard enough on the knobs. And these were healthy adults! – A Newsletter Reader |
All around the world vending machines are disappearing.
The too often used war cry of “For the good of the children” was used to get cigarette vending machines out of bars, where children are not allowed to be by law anyway. Well intentioned people heard the cry and jumped on the bandwagon, without realizing that banning something from children in places they don’t go is absurd.
This invasion of property rights only hurts the business owner, their staff, and customers, the vending machine manufacturers, repairmen, salesmen, all of which are old enough to choose to buy and use a legal product, or not.
Vending Machines
It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally the tobacco control industry is right… sort of at least.? Back around the turn of the century, Antismokers began getting excited about the dangers of cigarette vending machines in areas where children had easy and common access without adult presence or supervision.
It was much easier for a 13-year-old to walk anonymously up to an impersonal machine and drop a few dollars in to get a pack of Luckys than it was to confront a storekeeper who might embarrassingly demand to see ID, and refuse to make a sale.
When the Antismokers demanded that such machines be restricted to venues that were more adult-oriented their demands were reasonable if we accept the goal that it was a good thing to keep cigarettes from being purchased by 13-year-olds. However, when they went beyond that, and began demanding that cigarette machines also be removed in such venues as adults-only bars, they crossed the line, as usual, from being reasonable into being fanatical. First of all, the intimidation factor of a young teen walking into a venue primarily occupied by and restricted to those over 21 was probably greater than the intimidation factor of attempting the purchase in the store.? That would be particularly true in the case where a young teen knew that an older friend would be working as a clerk at the time of purchase.
And quite aside from considerations of intimidation factors, there was the entire question of purchase price, which was often a good 20% higher or more from a vending machine than it was when buying cigarettes in person.?
We’ve all heard, repeatedly, the claim made by Antismokers that “children” are much more price sensitive to cigarette purchasing than adults and much less likely to buy cigarettes when faced with even the smallest increases in purchase price.? Finally, there was another factor, one which most Antismokers obviously would not be aware of, that dealt simply with the mechanics of cigarette vending machines.
Many of the machines were older models that demanded that a knob be grasped and pulled in order to release the cigarettes within.
Antismokers will have seen such machines of course, but they’re unlikely to have actually purchased cigarettes through them and discovered that the knobs are actually rather difficult to pull.? An older teen might not have too much difficulty pulling the knob but the classical “child” would have faced real difficulty in pulling the knob hard enough just to release the product. As usual, “the children” were simply being used as a propaganda trick by the tobacco control industry in pursuit of their larger goal of denormalization of smokers and smoking.
Having cigarette vending machines sitting around as a normal part of the daily environment emphasized that cigarette smoking was something that was a normal part of life.? And, as we all know, this sort of thing irritates Antismokers as much as falling into a patch of poison ivy filled with bedbugs.? Additionally, having the vending machines commonly available to use, irritated their imagery of cigarette smokers as being weak willed individuals who are easily tempted by the mere sight of cigarettes.? They seemed to think that the bright lights of the machines and the bright colors of the packages and the pretty pictures of the brand logos sometimes highlighted on the sides of the machines were hypnotizing adults into smoking against their will.
Plus, having the machines readily available removed an inconvenience factor that sometimes faced smokers when their pack would run out and they might not feel strongly enough about getting another pack at the moment that they’d walk two blocks to a store to make a purchase.
Having cigarettes made so convenient was seen by the tobacco control industry as part of an overall evil plot by Big Tobacco to keep smokers addicted to their products. So those are some of the reasons for and against having cigarettes sold commonly in vending machines or less commonly in vending machines restricted to adults-only venues.
However, there is another aspect to all of this and that is the effect of the antismoking movement on the entire vending machine industry.
Cigarettes were a very profitable part of that industry.? Smokers buy their cigarettes in single units of a fairly uniform size so they are a different type of product than something like soda or potato chips requiring more complicated machines.? Consumers also tend to buy most of their food and sodas at supermarkets in larger containers than the more expensive items in a snack machine.? In the case of cigarettes, since many smokers, particularly lighter smokers, will buy them a single packet of time, the question of price for an individual “serving” is not as important as the convenience factor.
So the vending machine operators were able to support their network of buying, distributing, and maintaining the machines through the increased profits they were able to get by charging a premium on already fairly high product prices.? Selling candy bars or even small cans or bottles of soda simply did not offer the same percentage of profit to enable the support of the vending machine industry. While it is true that the industry has expanded its offerings in the area of junk food over the last 10 years (We’ve seen some of the result of that expansion in the expansion of waistlines over the last 10 years!) it has not been enough, and the industry is in trouble.
Why is that a bad thing?? It is a bad thing in terms of the economics and the jobs involved in that industry, and also in terms of the general quality of life and convenience for Americans who might wish to purchase either cigarettes or other products from such machines as part of their daily life.? There’s a lot of collateral damage caused by the tobacco control industry, and the loss of our vending machines may seem like only a small part of it, but it’s still there, it’s still real, and it’s a devastating loss to the families who were dependent upon the industry.
FDA – Tobacco Products – Guidance, Regulations & Compliance
June 2010 Draft Guidance for Industry: Compliance with Regulations Restricting the Sale and Distribution of Cigarettes and Smokeless Tobacco To Protect Children and Adolescents.   Read the letter from the FDA to the Spirit Keeper Tavern in Colorado. Please note that they have never had a problem with under age kids in the bar buying cigarettes. In fact, everyone wanting cigarettes had to have a bartender hit the button (hidden out of reach behind and under the bar) in order for the machine to work – AFTER they put money into the machine. There was no way that anyone could purchase cigarettes without being noticed. The system was TOTALLY safe. |
Originally written By Michael McFadden
