To pre-empt cigarette machine ban...count the wrinkles!

As the UK gears up for the Olympics and our government tries forcing the great British smoking, drinking, and eating unwashed public to go on a health kick by bringing in draconian laws to make us all conform (and in doing so running businesses into the ground, if not wiping them out altogether, at the stroke of a pen) this bugger blogger has the answer to at least one national business’s woes when the Scottish and English parliashites parliaments decide, and they will, to ban Cigarette Machines from the UK.

Ok, ok, it’s a Japanese idea, and I’m sure (almost) that the smoker in the street would have thought of it too (hands off, I got to it first,) but it could be the saving of the cigarette machine industry, and I want the credit here in the UK for it’s mind numbing blowing brilliance, it’s to save the chiiildren you know, godamnit! So here’s the brainstorming idea:

A new wrinkle in smoking enforcement...

Cigarette vending machines in Japan may soon start counting wrinkles, crow's feet and skin sags to see if the customer is old enough to smoke.

The legal age for smoking in Japan is 20 and as the country's 570,000 tobacco vending machines prepare for a July regulation requiring them to ensure buyers are not underage, a company has developed a system to identify age by studying facial features.

For a minute I thought it said ‘farcical’ features.

By having the customer look into a digital camera attached to the machine, Fujitaka Co's system will compare facial characteristics, such as wrinkles surrounding the eyes, bone structure and skin sags, to the facial data of over 100,000 people, Hajime Yamamoto, a company spokesman said.

"With face recognition, so long as you've got some change and you are an adult, you can buy cigarettes like before. The problem of minors borrowing (identification) cards to purchase cigarettes could be avoided as well," Yamamoto said.

At this point I must introduce a Freedom To Choose member that may find some difficulty with this idea, her name is Brenda Orsler and she might kick the shit out of the cigarette machine and/or barstaff if she was refused her cigs because she was deemed to be one of the ‘chiiildren’ to be ‘saved’ from us adults and our smoking habits, here is her avatar:

But I digress.

Oh chit, I’ve just saw a flaw in my argument for this, bugger!

so long as you've got some change and you are an adult???

I thought the whole idea was for this ‘new technology’ was to separate the men from the boys? (Girls can pee off and find their own axe to grind about this wonderful idea, this is men's talk!) Brenda excluded of course…GULP.

Yamamoto said the system could correctly identify about 90 percent of the users, with the remaining 10 percent sent to a "grey zone" for "minors that look older, and baby-faced adults," where they would be asked to insert their driving license.

Oh chit, chit and chit again, so it’s not kiddie proof? There’s a grey zone??? And here was me thinking that child smoking prevalence was almost licked all over the world by draconian anti smoking methods, methods to save the chiiildren from us adults and our filthy habits?

Oh, draconian bans on the filthy smoker do work and save the chiiildren to boot, say the likes of ASH Scotland (spit) and ASH UK (double spit) and their god, John Francis Banzhaf III, (if there’s an ambulance I'll chase it) and if they say so it must…?

Underage smoking has been on a decline in Japan, but a health ministry survey in 2004 showed 13 percent of boys and 4 percent of girls in the third year of high school -- those aged 17 to 18 -- smoked every day.

On reflection please ignore this line above:

I want the credit here in the UK for it’s mind numbing brilliance. (Changed my mind, no way Jock!)

Now I’m taking my biometric wrinkles down to the local ‘Booze 4 You’ to stand in the booze queue, get my dram, come home, go back to them and stand in the food queue to buy my dinner for tonight! (Thank god I’ve enough rolling baccy or I would have to go back to a third queue to buy my under the counter tobacco products, all in white with no logo’s, showing them my doctors certificate to say I am a smoker and eligible to buy such horrible products…all biometrically of course. Thank god my local porn shop does not have such draconian restrictions.

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