Why the strike anywhere kitchen match got banned — dunno the official story, but seems vermin sometimes chewed on the match heads and lit them? So instead of having boxes of them, or their heads, made vermin repellent, they just went out of existence. Paper matches, which still exist, seem riskier to me as you have to withdraw your finger at the exact right time after pressing and scraping the head against the friction strip. Which would sometimes lead to fumbling and dropping it. I never liked them very well, preferring rigid matches.
Hence - no more. Can't tell you why we won't be able to buy incandescent light bulbs soon or why we can't move on our highways without encountering some sort of roadblock, but it is the same thing.
It did? There's a Tru Value Hardware store here in town that will sell you all you need.
Last time I looked the local farm store still had “strike anywhere” matches. Maybe I should stock up! Back when I was a kid I used to make girls swoon by lighting them on my teeth. (Swooning is when they roll their eyes and walk away,right?)
I buy them everyday at my local supermarket
I'm not sure, but I suspect it's because there were several sabotage manuals floating around that described how to make bombs (of the order of hand grenades) using the heads of strike-anywhere matches as the explosive material. Evidently the government decided to cut off the supply to would-be saboteurs.