Marijuana Vending Machines?

Marijuana Vending Machines? - Los Angeles is bringing a new innovation to the world of convenience: a 24-hour marijuana vending machine.

The machine will be able to dispense medical marijuana to any registered card holder. That means that if you have a prescription card for marijuana for chronic pain, glaucoma, loss of appetite or other ailments that are said to be made better by a little marijuana, you no longer have to wait for your local distribution center to open.

A new 24-hour marijuana vending machine has been unveiled at the Herbal Nutrition Center in Los Angeles, where it can help to alleviate all those overnight aches and pains and other ailments that just can't wait for the morning, but this may not last for very long.

According to Vincent Mehdizadeh, inventor and owner of the vending machine, it took him seven months to develop and patent the black armored box used to dispense marijuana. He calls his box a PMV, or prescription vending machine.

The PMV requires not only a prescription card, which verifies that the holder is legally allowed to purchase the drug, but it also requires a fingerprint that is registered with the holder of the card so that no one else can use the card and purchase marijuana illegally.

The machine itself does not take any money, but rather all prescriptions filled by the machine have to be pre-paid. When the prepayment is received by a dispensary, they are given a card, which the machine will recognize as payment for the drugs purchased.

According to Mehdizadeh, anyone who is eligible to purchase medical marijuana can prepay and pick up their marijuana after hours.

So why would anyone want to use the machine?

Aside from the possibility of running our of marijuana in the middle of the night and having symptoms that only the drug can treat, many users are nervous about picking up their marijuana in person, according to Mehdizadeh, and this provides them a convenient and worry-free solution.

For those who worry about the possibility of people taking more marijuana than they should in any given period of time, a special feature has been built into the box. The machine does not allow any one user to take more than one ounce of marijuana a week. Each transaction gives the customer about one-eighth to two-eighths of an ounce.

Another benefit of the machine, according to those who are in favor of having these machines in the city, is lower costs. They say that by eliminating the workers behind the counter at the distribution centers, patients pay $20-$40 less per one-eighth of an ounce.

Not surprisingly, Federal drug agents are looking into whether this vending machine violates any drug laws. According to the agents, somebody fills the machine and that may be enough to have them removed from service if that person is not authorized to do so.

Information from CNN and NBC was used in this article.