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Comment by cfmcdonald | Hacker News Reader

The U.S. used to have cigarette vending machines. I believe they were phased out due to the desire to enforce age limits for smoking more strictly, not because of theft.

My general impression is that the U.S. used to have more vending machines in general ~30-40 years ago. I remember soda machines being outside of every grocery store, but I don't see that anymore. Newspaper vending machines also used to be common. But I don't have any data to back that up.

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I remember the cigarette machines from my youth. I was amazed that something so forbidden (I was a kid, and my parents didn't smoke) was available in restaurants if you were just bold/sneaky enough.

In Germany there are bars that still have them, but I think they're pretty rare now even there. The one used by one of my friends who smokes a lot even requires old DM coins, which you can get at the bar.

That's an amazing bit of indirection that both spares them having to update the machine and let's them change the price without reconfiguring the machine. Just like subway tokens.

Also in theory allows them to ensure that only people over the legal smoking age can use the machine

No they're still very common here. There are at least three within a 50m radius of my front door (inner city). Someone made a map of cigarette vending machines tagged in OSM in Dresden: http://ubahnverleih.de/osm/zigaretten/

yes, there were more vending machines:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/vending-machines-snack...

In LA the newspaper vending machines are still there, very common for ethnic language newspapers in certain neighborhoods, but probably 50% are abandoned on the sidewalk and used for trash and the occasional arson. Its one of those things where seemingly it's no one's responsibility to remove it, so there it will remain until they rust into dust or someone plows over one with their car.

LA is stuck in a bit of a time portal, though. Local mom and pop shops reign supreme still, especially ethnic stores, and there are even payphones still in frequent use by bus stops.

Germany still has ubiquitous cigarette vending machines You need some electronic proof of age (drivers license, ID card, bank card), but of course you could just "borrow" someone else's and use that. It's just a date of birth stored on the card.

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