I’m not sure I’m totally sold on Aliso Viejo’s Dispense Labs’ Autospense medical marijuana vending machine. I suppose for convenience it wins, however cutting out the person behind the counter whose job it is to guide you in the right direction with the vast cannabis selections in states with dispensary cultures is like cutting out the pharmacist at your local pharmacy.

Different strains of marijuana have very different effects, and it really helps to have someone with a working (even anecdotal) knowledge of the strains to assist when making your choices. It’s also important to physically see and smell the cannabis before purchasing. With Autospense, you can’t do that and it seems like a gamble.

From Orange County Register:

To use, patients must swipe a registration card, then enter a PIN number. Payment may be made with cash, credit or debit, then a door opens to release the product.

 

 
From the Autospense website:

After providing the proper documentation, the patient will be issued a pre-approved registration/membership card and have the opportunity to register in an optional finger print scanner system, which enables around-the-clock access to the Autospense machine. The member is granted access and walks into a well secured and camera monitored showroom.

 
Via Laughing Squid

 
Speaking as someone who would make a definitive study of one, I was pleased to read that marijuana smoking apparently does very little lung damage:

Via Vulture:

A government study, one of the most extensive examinations ever of the long-term effects of marijuana use, has found that smoking one joint a day for 7 years, or one joint a week for 49 years, does not impair lung function. In fact, “marijuana users performed slightly better on the lung function test” than people who don’t smoke anything. The study did not measure the effects of smoking a joint the size of a zucchini.

I might be able to help out there…

Marijuana Smoking Does Not Harm Lungs, Study Finds (New York Times)

(above image: Van Nuys Police Station 1951 via Valley Relics)
 
As our fair city continues to scramble to find more jobs and programs to cut due to massive budget shortfalls it strikes me as more than a little counter-productive to shutter hundreds of thriving, law-abiding small businesses. It’s amazing to me that in 2010 there are those who still fear the demon weed as if it’s anything more than a simple plant capable of providing relief to the ill and inspiration and tranquility to the healthy. People are dumb.
 

Los Angeles has lost over 150,000 jobs in the past year, is on the brink of bankruptcy, and experienced an unexpected 16 percent decline in sales tax revenue last year. And it’s located in a state with its own dire fiscal situation that is also facing unexpected gaps in tax revenue. Yet this week the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office made a move that’s certain to make things worse for its citizens: forcing over 400 functioning businesses to close shop, under threat of jail time.

Don’t worry, though. It’s no big deal. Those businesses are only selling medicine.

Medical marijuana, that is. As detailed in my May Reason magazine cover story, Los Angeles struggled for years with regulating medical marijuana storefronts—which thrived in L.A. as in no other city. In January the city finally came down with an ordinance imposing a variety of new restrictions, including how the businesses handled cash, provided security and lighting, and paid their employees, as well as insisting that the shops were not technically allowed to make a profit.

But the ordinance’s most important effect will be to reduce the 500-plus functioning storefronts serving the city’s medical marijuana community to a mere 70 (with some possible grandfathering that might bring the eventual total higher).

 
Reason.com: Los Angeles Destroys Functioning Businesses in a Recession
 
thx Giga Granada Hills !

 
Today’s NYT shines some light on a new print campaign created for the Boulder-based Hapa Sushi chain.  Hoping to lure customers to Hapa, a map was created which shows the area’s 59 medical marijuana dispensaries (blue dots) and their close proximity to the 4 Hapa outlets (red dots).

As Hapa owner Mark Van Grack told the Times, ?