God Damnit, Someone Is Making a Keurig Machine for Weed
Alongside the pleasantly mellow way we’re feeling about the spread of legalized pot, there is a dark undercurrent of paranoia. When getting high is no longer a crime, will it stop being so much fun? Will bald guys in khakis start loudly discussing their favorite sativa blends while in line at the supermarket? Will smarmy weed VCs and entrepreneurs try to “disrupt” the market of novelty bongs and cigarette-shaped one-hitters with some technology nobody asked for? Will someone invent a goddamned Keurig machine for smoking pot?
Enter CannaKorp, via the Boston Globe:
The CannaKorp vaporizer is expected to debut early next year, just a few months after Massachusetts voters decide whether to legalize marijuana for recreational use.
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The company’s sleek, white-plastic vaporizer heats marijuana just enough to release the active compounds while stopping short of actually burning the plant. Users breathe in the vapors released through a canister, and the marijuana comes in small, single-use “pods” that are independently filled by legally authorized growers.
If that sounds a lot like the Keurig instant coffee machine, it’s no mistake. CannaKorp chairman Dave Manly was a longtime vice president at Keurig Green Mountain Inc. before retiring in 2014 and linking up with Bourque.
Besides sounding like a pretty boring way to get stoned, a pod-based delivery system for weed would seem to carry all the same problems as a pod-based delivery system for coffee: overpriced product, non-biodegradable materials, tons and tons of extra waste. If the similarities between CannaKorp and Keurig are really all they’re cracked up to be, there will also be the problem of pot that tastes like microwaved cardboard.
Stoners’ distrust of corporate powers and embrace of the environment is only matched by our love of convenience. We can only hope the tree-hugger side wins out in the end.