SAN BENITO COUNTY, Calif. -- You can already buy soda, candy, cigarettes, even toys from vending machines, and it looks like medical marijuana could be next.
"The first time that I saw that, I was like is that a Redbox, but it says Medbox, so it's like something like this, I've never imagined," said Ernie Castillo, Patient.
It's something Purple Cross Rx Director Scott McPhail says he imagined for years. He helped come up with the idea to dispense medical marijuana through vending machines.
"This is just part of the plan of where we want to be a year from now," said Scott McPhail.
By 2013, McPhail hopes you can get your medical marijuana the same way you buy a soda, right out of a machine.
The way it works is you slide a card into the machine, it will ask you for your thumb print, and then it will bring up a list of categories such as medicine, edibles and accessories. This is when you can choose the cannabis, the amount and with just a tap on the screen, it will be dispensed to you.
"You need a biometric thumbprint of someone that's registered with a card. It's also a lock box safe, so if someone tried to break into it, there's alarms attached to it," said McPhail.
There are already a couple of these machines around Los Angeles, and McPhail wants this machine to be in a Central Coast hospital sometime this month. The only problem is none of the hospitals knew about it until we asked them Monday. Some said they would investigate. The machines are the first of their kind, and can only be found in California right now.
