Los Angeles premiered the medical marijuana vending machine on Monday, with three dispensaries already prepared to welcome their fingerprinted, photographed and prescription-toting customers.

The unusual vending machine is the invention of Vincent Mehdizadeh, owner of medical-marijuana dispensary Herbal Nutrition Centre in Los Angeles, who told the Associated Press that it took him more than half a year to design and patent the device, a black, armored box, which he calls the “PVM” – prescription vending machine.

The machines can only be used by people who have prescriptions for the drug in order to alleviate their chronic pain, loss of appetite, nausea and other health problems that marijuana has been shown to make easier to bear when other drugs fail.

Patients are required to present their prescription for approval and undergo a few security measures before they are able to rely on the machine’s 24-hour services, USA Today notes. They are fingerprinted and photographed; they purchase a pre-paid card with a magnetic stripe; they choose the dosage they need (3.5 grams or 7 grams) and one of five strains of marijuana (Platinum Kush, Fire O. G., Bubba Kush, Purple Kush and Wild Cherry, per the Los Angeles Daily news.)

Once the patients begin to use the card, it will be verified each time, as will their fingerprints; if all is well, the marijuana is then dispensed to them in capsule form, within a green vacuum-sealed packages. Patients can buy no more than 1 ounce per week. The dispensaries will be protected by armed security guards around the clock.

Each time a patient stands before the machine, which is bolted to the floor at the entrance to the dispensary, to get a new dose, a video camera takes a snapshot of the person and adds it to a database, the Daily News specifies.

“Convenient access, lower prices, safety, anonymity,” Mehdizadeh told the AP of his invention.

It remains to be seen whether Mehdizadeh’d entrepreneurship will survive the rigors of federal laws.

“Somebody owns (it), it's on a property and somebody fills it,” DEA Special Agent Jose Martinez told the AP. “Once we find out where it's at, we'll look into it and see if they're violating laws.”