A California company is trying to make getting medical marijuana as easy as using an ATM.

Dispense Labs unveiled the “Autospense,” an automated medical marijuana dispensary that looks like a lunch room vending machine. The difference is patients have to swipe a doctor-approved registration card, use fingerprint identification and enter a PIN number.

The best line from the company’s news release: “Autospense automatically rotates pre-packaged inventory to maintain quality control and freshness.”

Found Joe DeRobbio explained how it works to ABC News:

After swiping the card, the patient is granted access to a caged, camera-monitored room. From there, a patient swipes his or her card again and is given a menu to choose medicinal variety and quantity, DeRobbio said. Payment can be made with cash, credit or debit card. Once payment is received, the door to the machine opens, much like an ATM machine, to allow patients to remove their medicinal marijuana. After hours, Autospense is open only to patients who have agreed to the fingerprint option – they run their prints through a scanner and swipe a registration card, DeRobbio said.

DiRobbio told The Orange County Register that the company is likely to lease the machines to qualified dispensaries for $1,500-$2,000 a month. So far, there is only one store, in Santa Ana.

The inspiration behind the product was providing 24-hour, safe access for patients who rely on dispensaries for their medical marijuana. Here’s more from the Register:

“I noticed most of the dispensaries in operation were very haphazard, unorganized, dangerous,” he said.

The Autospense’s features are the result of DeRobbio’s efforts to mitigate problems. The transparency and controlled inventory will help allay local government fears of feeding a black market or contributing to crime, he said. Overall, the system will be safer, he added. “The patient feels they are in a secure, safe environment where they can get their meds and not worry where those meds are coming from,” he said.

Like California, medical marijuana is legal in Washington state, although state law doesn’t allow marijuana dispensaries. This year,voters will decide whether to pass Initiative 502, which would decriminalize small amounts of pot and license and regulate marijuana production through state-run stores. Could we see marijuana vending machines after that?

Another cannabis vending machine company, Medbox, filed a lawsuit that accuses Dispense Labs of patent infringement and “tarnishing the image” of technology that Medbox says it created.

“The federal government already thinks of the medical marijuana industry as purely recreational, with very little medical value and companies like Dispense Labs reinforce that myth through their brazen actions,” said Vincent Mehdizadeh, CEO and founder of Prescription Vending Machines, Inc., a subsidiary of Medbox, Inc., in a news release.

While Medbox “has had offers” to provide the same 24-hour service to marijuana clinics nationwide over the last few years, Medbox has declined such placements of their machines, the statement said.

“The reality is that the federal government does not condone medical marijuana, they simply tolerate it as long as operators of medical marijuana outlets are not willful profiteers and can demonstrate some semblance of reasonable behavior,” Mehdizadeh said. “The medical marijuana industry cannot legally justify 24-hour access to marijuana at this point in time and I will make it my mission to stop Dispense Labs before they make a mockery of our company’s vital technology.”