News

It talks, it checks IDs, it dispenses smokes

August 7, 2002

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Cigarette maker Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., seeking to reinvigorate the cigarette vending market while assuaging critics of the machines, is experimenting with kiosk-style vending machines at nightclubs in Cleveland and Los Angeles.

The machines, which feature a video screen with animated characters to promote machine's products, only accept credit-card purchases. The machines offer Brown & Williamson brands along with selected brands from other tobacco companies. Marconi Online Systems designed the machine for Brown & WIlliamson.

Customers must also swipe their driver's licenses through the machine to verify that they are 18 years old or older. Critics have long contended that cigarette vending machines allow underage smokers access to cigarettes. Over the past decade, vending machine sales of cigarettes have fallen from 5 percent of all cigarette sales in the U.S. to 1 percent, according to the Wall Street Journal.

"This is the most significant innovation in the U.S. cigarette-vending business in a lifetime, because it solves the age-old problem of youth access," Steve Rogers, Brown & Williamson distribution and vending director, told the Journal.

Brown & Williamson officials are turning to the machine as part of an effort to rally its eroding market share. According to the Journal, the cigarette maker's market share has dropped from 15 percent to 10.9 percent in recent years.