"So sometime in the next several weeks, in March or April, Tyndall will launch a pilot program to distribute hydromorphone pills (a pharmaceutical narcotic derived from morphine) to registered users, using vending machines that read the distinctive blood-vessel patterns in a user’s finger to ensure they’re going to the right addict.
The machines are distributed by Dispension Industries, a company in Halifax that gets them from American Green, a company in North Carolina. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the name of the U.S. company, the machines were originally designed to distribute cannabis, but rejigging them to dispense hydromorphone pills is easy enough."