In Japan, many things can be bought from the vending machines, drinks, food, eggs, adult magazines, used pantsu and cigarettes and the list just goes on.

However, smokers in Japan will no longer be able to buy cigarettes from vending machines from next year without an ID smart card called “taspo” — a blend of the words tobacco, access and passport — which will only be issued to people who are at least 20, the legal smoking age.

The blue taspo, which also functions as an electronic money card for the new machines, will be offered free of charge by the Tobacco Institute of Japan after smokers send identification papers attesting to their age.

The smoker’s picture will be on the card, although the vending machines will not be able to read the images, so they won’t be able to tell if the customer is legitimate. (´-`).｡oO(?!?)

The Tobacco Institute hopes the new system will prevent minors from smoking and also to raise awareness among adults to keep cigarettes away from children.

This is so interesting. I wonder if they will start to have similar system for those burusera machines and porn vending machines as well. Those machine are so popular that a Japanese police was shot in his butt while attempting to thwart a porn vending machine robbery in Fukuoka. This was reported about a week back on Japanese news. Maybe the robbers were underaged or the porn was just too expensive.