Society, in our modern time, orbits on the axis of getting things done, and of getting things done in the quickest, most efficient, cheapest way possible. Cell phones in their simplest form constantly connect our calls to whomever we want, wherever we want, whenever we want. In the same way, laptop computers, crafted for complete portability, allow us to take our offices to our home or the nearest Starbucks, our iChat, AIM or web browsing skills to classes, and to carry the crux of our personal and professional lives on our shoulders in our laptop messenger bags.
Fast food functions in a similar way. Don’t have time for the family dinner around your dining room table? Don’t even have time to get out of your car? Fast food and take-out restaurants accommodate the needs of the no-spare-time-having, cheap-fare-wanting individual, providing immediate, inexpensive (and sometimes inedible) meals to the busy clientèle.
You can even know pick up your prescription medicine through an automated machine at some Rite Aids by typing in your username and password.
This craze over convenience, however, has taken a new turn as of late. The Herbal Nutrition Center, an LA based medical marijuana center, announced that its facility would install a vending machine that would allow their patients to pick up and refill their prescriptions. The effort into getting pot has been eliminated. While the machines provide heightened security and require several forms of ID—fingerprint, photograph, and proof of prescription—their main goal is to lower cost and wait time.
In an age where people won’t stand to wait for anything—to get home to call or email someone, to eat dinner outside of the SUV, to stand in line at Rite Aid—it comes as no shock that the boundaries between the pot and the people, the labors and costs it once took to get it, have been made much less daunting, more efficient, and more affordable.