14 DAY TRIAL // An American company tries to revolutionize the marijuana industry by creating a vending machine for pot and pot products. However, the new automatic dispenser, called the ZaZZZ, is for medical marijuana patients only, and the entrepreneurs hope to soon gain popularity among clients.
The machine's manufacturer, American Green, describes it as “an automated, age-verifying, climate-controlled marijuana dispensing machine.”
ZaZZZ made its debut at a private event in Eagle County on April 12, and was then installed inside Avon medical dispensary Herbal Elements on April 13, but isn’t in use yet. Its makers say that it will be soon stocked with products from Herbal Elements from nearby Eagle-Vail.
“We’re looking forward to using the ZAZZ machine to easily track all this inventory … we’re gonna eliminate the middle man. It’ll go straight from the budtender right into our machine,” Herbal Elements owner Greg Honan said, according to KDVR.
However, American Green explains that buying a pot brownie won't be as easy as getting a Snickers bar or a soda can out of a regular vending machine, as this high-tech automatic vendor will verify a person's age and identity through their driver's license. Moreover, the buyer will need to have a valid medical marijuana card in order to make purchases from the new machine, which will have multiple cameras attached to it to verify the person who uses the machine is the actual holder of the card.
“They would swipe their driver's license at which point multiple cameras would allow us to use some advanced biometrics to make absolutely certain that the person who swiped the card is the owner of that card,” said Stephen Shearin, chief operating officer of Tranzbyte – the company that owns American Green.
Shearin also highlights that the purpose of such a vending machine is to help businesses, like marijuana dispensaries, move faster. He explains that only one machine has been installed so far in a controlled environment, namely the Herbal Elements dispensary, to test its functioning before full public release.
Besides the driver's license verification, the products that will be introduced in the dispenser will all be tracked by radio frequency identification chips, so the manufacturer says people won't have to worry about marijuana getting into the wrong hands.
“We believe that the process will enhance legal sales facilities in ensuring that controlled substances (so far as we can control at the time of sale) are dispensed solely into the hands of those who qualify legally — let alone proprietary biometrics that are yet to come,” Shearin added.