Japan: streets unsafe as machines prey on children

Just outside the ubiquitous convenience stores and supermarkets, on virtually every urban street corner, and even at unattended locations on rural highways, tobacco vending machines give young people unlimited opportunity to buy tobacco products with no one watching. Most notably, 19% of 15 to 20 year old men, and 4.3% of 15 to 20 year old women, identified themselves as smokers. [...]although the survey avoided counting smokers younger than 15 years old, among all smokers in Japan, roughly 8% of men and 6% of women said they started to smoke before they were 15 years old.