Show HN: Premium Medical Marijuana Subscription – SF Only

Look into "high risk merchant accounts". Quite a few CC processors specialize in it. Porn shops, gun shops, marijuana dispensaries, etc, all fall under that umbrella.

Despite the derogatory name, I actually doubt these kind of businesses present a higher than normal financial risk. For example, all gun purchase undergo FBI's NICS background check, so I suspect that gun shops have a lower rate of CC fraud compared to other retailers. As for porn shops, Guy Ritchie says it better than me:

Tom: Listen to this one: you open a company called the "Arse Tickler's Faggots Fan Club".

Soap: You what?

Tom: You take out an advert in the back page of some gay mag, advertising the latest in arse-intruding dildos. You sell it with, I dunno, "does what no other dildo can do until now", "the latest and greatest in sexual technology", "guaranteed results or your money back", all that bollocks. Now, these dils cost twenty-five quid a pop. That's a snip for the amount of pleasure they're gonna give the recipients. But they send their cheques to the other company name – nothing offensive, er, "Bobbie's Bits" or something – for twenty-five quid. You take that twenty-five quid, you stick it in the bank until it clears. Now, this is the smart bit. You send back the cheque for twenty-five pound from the other company name, "Arse Tickler's Faggots Fan Club", saying we're sorry, we couldn't get the supplies from America because they ran out of stock. Now, you see how many people cash that cheque: not a single soul, because who wants their bank manager to know they tickle arse when they're not paying cheques?

Why not accept bitcoin?

It may be worth considering putting the Goldstar menu on your site so users know what options are available to them. Could even include Leafly reviews so people can have a bit more info on what they're getting each month.

You don't have to pick out a different strain every month (or however often you purchase). Once someone finds 2 or 3 that they like they just keep buying those. People are already faced with a huge number of choices for alcohol and numerous other consumable products, but have little difficulty identifying their favorites even if they're not not connoisseurs of any particular product.

> rules right now are: 1. No green

What's your long term plan if you don't want to make any money?

Like the name and branding a lot. Kudos to you guys for going with a forward-thinking approach.

Why do you need a Bitcoin payment processor? Bitcoin, BYOB.* ;)

* Be Your Own Bank

This is so ironic it's laughable. The entire point of Bitcoin is that its inherent decentralization inhibits regulatory activities like determining which businesses are and are not allowed. Yet the VC-funded ecosystem sprouting up around Bitcoin is so antithetical to its thesis of decentralization that the best tooling available is increasingly more centralized. Put another way, the decentralization of Bitcoin is actively against the interest of many of the companies starting to serve its market. BitPay, Coinbase, etc. are all predicated on the assumption that customers will transact almost entirely through their centralized platforms, foregoing the many benefits of decentralization, in exchange for the convenience of a nice GUI around Bitcoin. At the end of the day, what really is the difference between Bitcoin and credit cards, if the merchants enabling websites to seamlessly accept Bitcoin are just as regulatory as the credit card companies they are seeking to displace?

It just seems so backwards to me. I could write a longer post on this but it's way off topic.

Sadly, I'm not in San Fran

That makes sense. And until things improve on the legal front, it seems wise for customers to stay cash-only anyway. I know I do even though the dispensary I use takes credit cards.

And I understand the part about too many choices being overwhelming. My dispensary has 30-40 varieties and I often just stand there and stare at the board.

But, probably not a service I'd use. I have several convenient choices on my way home from work and being at home for a delivery is less convenient. But I can see it being very beneficial to people that might be home-bound and need their medicine. Best of luck.

Take a look at the dispensaries like GreenCross. Sub $30 for an 1/8th is pretty typical.

My favorite reason I've heard of for prescribing medical marijuana: writer's block. A police officer told me that, so I'm inclined to believe its true.

That's cool; what are the repercussions of getting such a card, though? Do you get on TSA's no-fly lists? Are you automatically exempt from holding jobs in the Government? Something else that I'm missing, perhaps?

That doesn't make it difficult to get a recommendation and purchase medical marijuana though.

There are lots of jokes along those lines, but honestly, the marijuana doctors' actions seem pretty rational to me.

The thing is, marijuana is thought possibly to be beneficial for a huge swath of conditions, many of which are primarily self-reported like insomnia and migraines. A normal doctor would probably not give you the third degree you before suggesting a treatment for these conditions either. And since marijuana is largely benign even when it doesn't help, this is not really irresponsible on the marijuana doctors' part. My doctor was advocating a riskier course of treatment when he told me to take ibuprofen!

I believe THC and cannabinoids other than CBD do have their own medical benefits - they're just not publicized as much. Most probably because THC is psychoactive which a lot of people aren't comfortable compared to CBD which doesn't have the same sort of "high" effect.

Not necessarily, particularly depending on what you specifically want to treat.

If you go poking around weedmaps.com (well, after their site starts functioning again :/), and look into strain-specific details there, there absolutely are low THC strains available, and also amazingly high THC level strains. High and low CBN/CBD, etc.

In addition, they have some space dedicated to breaking out the main/known active contituents in MJ, and what they're believed best to affect.

Sometimes HN doesn't seem like polite company!

The feds have seized operations which were legal in their state.

You do realize that the fed does more or less what it wants?: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/24/dea-raid-medical-ma...

You realize it's still illegal at the federal level?