TBH the reason I didn’t expect such machines to be put out in the street could just be that in Britain anything like that is far more likely to get vandalised/broken into anyway than in other European countries (our red telephone boxes were constantly targeted since the 1960s and they also got used as a WC) – it appears that Germany also still sells cigarettes in street vending machines (which now also check age ID ).
Athough these are now banned in the UK from nearly everywhere (including most bits of pubs) on health grounds I have never seen a street vending machine in my lifetime (there were some outside corner shops until 1960s/1970s) and got the impression they were removed long before the worries about health during the recession of the 1970s/80s as they obviously contained both tobacco and cash in a less secure environment…
