Pubdate: Wed, 13 May 2015
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Tracey Lien

SIDECAR TEAMS UP ON MARIJUANA DELIVERIES

On-demand transportation company SideCar has partnered with Meadow, a 
self-described "full-service cannabis concierge," to deliver medical 
marijuana to patients in the Bay Area, the two San Francisco 
start-ups announced Tuesday.

Under the arrangement, when medical marijuana card-holding patients 
order cannabis from one of Meadow's partner dispensaries, some of the 
deliveries will be made by SideCar drivers.

Meadow Chief Executive David Hua said the partnership offers 
dispensaries a turnkey delivery system, allowing them to leverage 
SideCar's technology and network of drivers instead of investing in 
their own delivery services.

"One thing that really appealed to us about SideCar is they started 
with delivering people, then they moved into people and packages, so 
we thought, OK, can they deliver medicine?" Hua said. "When you think 
about it logistically, it's no different, but there's a lot of 
compliance you have to follow."

The level of compliance needed appealed to SideCar because, according 
to SideCar CEO Sunil Paul, the company had been looking to dabble 
with "highly curated" deliveries.

"When we launched our delivery capacity, one of the things we knew we 
were capable of doing but didn't yet have partners for was 
specialized deliveries," Paul said.

Under the partnership, all SideCar drivers who perform medical 
marijuana deliveries will also have to be card-carrying patients of 
the dispensaries for which they deliver. Drivers will not deliver 
more than the legal carrying limit of eight ounces of medical 
marijuana, and the packages will be in a locked box in the trunk. To 
ensure the safety of the drivers, all transactions are cashless, and 
customers using the service have to be verified card holders.

The service is available only in the Bay Area, although SideCar's 
more general "people and packages" delivery service is available in 
L.A., Seattle and Boston.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom