Tell your state leaders to support drone delivery!

Drone delivery just took off in Atlanta — and has the potential to both reduce car traffic and save lives with fast-response medical intervention.

Alphabet subsidiary Wing Aviation has partnered with Walmart to launch drone delivery in the Atlanta, Georgia metro area. It’s already operational!

Wing’s drones are battery-electric, weather-resistant, are equipped with extra-quiet propellers, can automatically avoid obstacles, and only needs a space the size of a picnic blanket to hover and lower its order package. Notably, their model of drone delivery can take cars off the road by replacing 20-minute delivery drives with flights averaging less than 5 minutes, and can transport groceries, holiday gifts, and over-the-counter medications directly to households. Further Wing drone delivery rollouts are planned for 2026 in Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa.

The potential for drone delivery is extraordinary. U.S. startup Zipline is already using autonomous electric drone delivery services to transport vital medical supplies (including drugs, vaccines, blood and anti-venom products) to remote areas in several African countries. A recent study has found that medical facilities in the Ashanti Region of Ghana that were served by Zipline drones saw a 56% reduction in maternal deaths compared to the same facilities before drone deliveries! Zipline is also trying to set up drone delivery in America, with healthcare a major priority.

Fast drone delivery of pizzas and Christmas presents will be nice, as will reducing car traffic. But the biggest impact of Wing-style drone flights might be supporting on-demand medical drone deliveries, a truly brilliant civilizational advance! Even in ordinary day-to-day circumstances, drone delivery of medical supplies can save a whole lot of lives, and we’re only in the very early days now. Just imagine being able to send by drone an asthma inhaler, EpiPen, oxygen bottle, or defibrillator to someone in need who can’t wait for the nearest ambulance to get there, or to drone-ship a key prescription from a specialty lab to a rural urgent care center in hours instead of days!

And it’ll be more useful than ever as the medical profession badly needs fluid rapid response capacity in a climate-roiled world. Delivering medical supplies by drone could help underequipped clinics (especially in rural areas) quickly get the specialty medicines they need to treat early cases of emerging diseases like babesiosis (spread by ticks) and Coccidioides fungal infections (spread by spores). In any future epidemic or pandemic, a drone delivery network would enable much faster distribution of drugs, vaccines, and personal protective gear. During climate disasters like hurricanes, floods, or wildfires, delivery drones could deliver essential survival tools like water purification filters or anti-smoke masks straight to households — even in areas cut off by damaged roads. This might very quickly become a vital new scalable tool for community resilience!

Wing already has federal FAA certification to operate delivery drones, but rollout in specific cities and regions can be helped or harmed by other levels of government. State government action to codify supportive regulatory structures and a fast-acting permitting process for drone delivery in general could help kick off a virtuous cycle and incentivize more progress on medical drone services.

Tell your state leaders to support drone delivery!