Driven by growing concerns over potential health problems of underage smoking, the tobacco industry will introduce vending machines featuring an age-verification system in 2008 to prevent minors from buying cigarettes.
Three industry bodies, the Tobacco Institute of Japan, the Japan Tobacconist Federation, and the Japan Vending Machine Manufacturers Association, said Thursday they will start accepting applications in December 2007 for integrated circuit cards that will be needed to buy cigarettes from vending machines.
They said the trial use of the new vending machines, in Yokaichiba, Chiba Prefecture, for one year from April 2002 and in Tanegashima, Kagoshima Prefecture, from May 2005, proved the system works.