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Of Course You Can Now Get Prescription Pills Delivered By Drone

Not too long ago the idea of a flying robot dropping off drugs at your doorstep—legally—would have sounded insane.
Image: unten44/Flickr

It was bound to happen: There's now a San Francisco startup that will deliver drugstore items to you via drone, including your prescription meds.

That is if you live in the city's Mission district, where QuiQui (pronounced "quickie") will make it's first run of deliveries this summer—to your location within 15 minutes, 24 hours a day, for a $1 delivery fee.

Hey, drones can already bring you beer and pizza, and have been used to smuggle drugs into prisons, so drone-delivered pills seems a natural enough next step. There were also false reports that the delivery service would include medical marijuana, which the company said isn't the case.

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"We never said that and we don't anticipate every being able to deliver medical marijuana via drone," QuiQui founder Josh Ziering told me over email.

It wasn't too long ago that the notion of a flying robot dropping off drugs at your doorstep, and this being completely legal, would have sounded insane. But QuiQui's launch comes on the heels of the recent federal judge ruling that flying drones for commercial use is fair game—a slap in the face for the Federal Aviation Administration, which has been fighting to prohibit DIY drones.

Which means if you've got a crazy idea for a drone business—like, say, flying pharmaceuticals around San Francisco—now's the time to do it. QuiQui's looking for funding for a fleet of three or four quadcopters, at a few thousand dollars each, and to build the considerably more expensive proprietary software to run the operation. It's aiming to be up and running by July, provided the FAA doesn't crack down on commercial drones before then. And it won't be the only drone startup scurrying to launch before the agency makes a move.

It's worth mentioning that delivering scripts isn't the startup's focus; it's currently working with local pharmacies to offer prescription drugs, but doesn't yet know which ones, or have a timeframe for when meds will be included in the package. "The main problem is what you would consider a service like QuiQui: A person packs it and a person receives it, but it is it a delivery?" said Ziering. "The answers to these questions will help us find our market fit."

The company chose to focus on drugstore goods because they're lightweight, and start out in the Mission district because it's flat unlike many other neighborhoods in the city, and the buildings are relatively short, making the skies easier to navigate.

When you're sick at home alone dying for some NyQuil, this would be a handy service I admit. And indeed the idea came about after Ziering was out late one night, woke up in need of some Advil and didn't want to venture out in the rain to pick it up. "I mumbled to myself, 'We should have drones to deliver this shit.' QuiQui was born."

But the medication part of the plan raises a host of still-unanswered questions. What if the machine drops an object while en route? No a huge deal if it's, say, your new toothbrush, but what if it's your anti-anxiety meds? What happens if a regulated substance ends up in the wrong person's hands? Will the company draw the line for what kind of Rx drugs it'll deliver?

"For most drugs it won't be a problem. Do you really want to take someone else's birth control? Or antibiotics?" Ziering said. "There are certain classes of drugs we may choose not to deliver for this reason. Sadly, the people who need this service the most will suffer from this decision. Painkillers spring to mind here, but so does Adderall. We don't ever want to create a situation where controlled substances are put in the hands of people who should not have them."