If you’re a medical marijuana patient living in San Francisco, CA, you may soon have the privilege of receiving your medication via drone(s). Although the concept of weed delivery has ventured far from its infancy stage, this new fusion with drone technology should whet the appetite of tech stoners seeking an alternative to their usual, mundane stroll to the local dispensary.
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Trees intends to disrupt the current marijuana dispensary model
Trees is a San Francisco based “cannabis delivery startup app” seeking to expand it’s already established weed delivery service through the employment of drones and acceptation of payments using Bitcoin.
In an interview with
Cointelegraph, Marshall Hayner, co-founder of the evolving marijuana venture stated, “the model that Trees is building is for a complete decentralization and disruption of the cost-heavy, high-overhead current dispensary model”.
With an overall mission and goal including giving consumers the “absolute best and most quality cannabis experience known to man,” Hayner and his development team hope to combine state of the art aviation technology with high grade cannabis products for a cost effective business model, based on the concept of weed delivery.
Bitcoin will be used as a main form of payment
If you look on their
website, you see that Trees accepts payment in U.S. dollars; however, the company also accepts bitcoin, a digital form of payment using encryption techniques to verify transfers and generate currency, independently of a central banking system.
Essentially, Bitcoin allows dispensaries to operate as their own bank, an option that has eluded countless medical marijuana dispensaries across legalized states that have been repetitiously turned down by banking and merchant processors. This has resulted in dispensaries having to deal in cash only services, with the heightened risk of being robbed or having to pay for additional armed security.
Recently, Bitcoin has headlined the news as the cryptocurrency of choice on what is better known as the deep Web. Often associated with illegal activity due to it's anonymous purchasing capabilities, the deep Web are the parts of the internet that are not accessible to search engines, and when used in conjunction with certain software, can assist in viewing content
anonymously.
In conjunction with bitcoin, users can also buy products anonymously if they are skilled enough to know how to do it. This has caused a handful of problems for law enforcement officials, who see the deep Web as nothing more than a criminal's playground, writhe with arms dealing,
hard drug dealing, and deprecatingly depraved acts too gruesome for most to even lay eyes on.
Trees hopes to use Bitcoin as the digital asset it was intended to be: away from the dark, murky waters of the deep Web, and evolved into a currency that Hayner believes will one day replace the dollar.
According to Hayner, “the industry has been stagnated by lack of innovation and greed. Bitcoin is a light in a dark tunnel for the cannabis industry.”
Federal Aviation approval is the next step
Much like other drone delivery services that have existed outside the realm of marijuana, Trees has the daunting task of getting approval from the Federal Aviation Administration in order to operate their drones legally for distributing cannabis to their clientele.
Since marijuana remains illegal on a federal level and continues to stay on the list of schedule 1 narcotics, it's unlikely that Trees will get the approval needed, and may need to operate in the "gray zone" for a brief time before the federal ban on marijuana is lifted.
As stated on their website, "drone deliveries might not be available in your area," however, if the FAA passes the necessary legislation
and if medical marijuana is finally made legal on a federal level, Trees claims that they'll have "fleets" of weed delivery drones prepared for take off throughout the country. Basically, a tech stoner's dream come true.
What do you get in a Trees weed delivery box?
All from the convenience of your smart phone or laptop, medical marijuana patients have the option of selecting from 3 available boxes, all themed around your level of cannabis expertise: The Beginner Box, the Bud Box, and the Extract Box.
Each box comes with a carefully crafted combination of high grade cannabis strains, shatter concentrates,
rolling papers, lighters, HempWick, as well as other marijuana products and smoking accessories put together in neat kits for the curious novice, to the seasoned connoisseur. The company also promises same day weed delivery.
Only time will tell if Hayner and his team will succeed in getting approval from the FAA for their marijuana drone logistics, but for now, just the thought of drones delivering weed to your door step is enough to keep connoisseurs asking for more.
