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It’s high time: You can finally buy weed through the Apple app store

It’s high time: You can finally buy weed through the Apple app store

Great news! iPhone users can finally purchase marijuana through the Apple app store — so long as it’s from a licensed dispensary, and they’re in a state where buying weed is legal.

Earlier this summer, Apple updated a policy that banned cannabis delivery apps from its store to make exceptions for “licensed or otherwise legal cannabis dispensaries,” as reported by Mashable. And last month, Apple actually approved its first weed delivery app: Ease, a California delivery service with 2 million registered customers.

“The shoppable Eaze app is a major milestone for the legal cannabis market and consumers,” Eaze wrote in a statement announcing its app launch. “It’s hard to overstate how important this is to our company and the industry,” Rogelio Choy, CEO of Eaze, concurred. “It’s deeply gratifying to launch the Apple Store’s first fully-functional cannabis delivery app, making it even easier for our two million registered customers to legally consume.”

Several other apps of the sort have since joined the store, including Beta, Caliva and Pineapple Express. Weedmaps, which helps users find local dispensaries (sort of like a Yelp — but for weed), was already approved and available for use as it didn’t facilitate purchases, but added a shoppable component earlier this week. Now, Weedmaps users can not just locate nearby dispensaries, but order directly from them, too.

“We commend companies like Apple that work with industry leaders to find solutions that drive innovation in our space,” Justin Dean, Chief Technology Officer at WM Technology, Inc, said in a statement announcing Weedmaps’ update. “It’s encouraging to see policies and attitudes toward cannabis shift in a way that promises remarkable growth, and we look forward to introducing an even simpler way to order cannabis from retailers through our platform.”

While it’s certainly exciting, don’t get carried away: Apple still has a variety of restrictions  in place to ensure all marijuana purchases conducted through the platform are legal. All apps pertaining to “highly regulated fields,” like banking, healthcare, and/or cannabis sales, are mandated to be provided by “legal entity that provides the services, and not by an individual developer.”

Plus, all apps are “geo-restricted to the corresponding legal jurisdiction,” meaning if you’re not in a state wherein marijuana is still illegal — say, Wyoming, despite the pro-cannabis culture of its Southern neighbour Colorado, or on an iPhone in Idaho (despite its weed-friendly Western neighbours of California, Oregon, and Washington) — cannabis apps won’t even download.

Unfortunately, Google Play still forbids all apps pertaining to pot or the possibility of purchasing it.

iPhone users in states where weed is legal, however, are free to order weed from the comfort of their beds, as they simultaneously place orders for food. The future is now — or shall we say, the Stoned Age.

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