Texas’ medical cannabis program just expanded dramatically. When House Bill 46 took effect Sept. 1, it broadened the Texas Compassionate Use Program to include more than 100 qualifying conditions. TCUP allows approved physicians to prescribe low-THC cannabis for PTSD, chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, and over 100 other serious illnesses. When Texas first legalized medical cannabis in 2015, eligibility was limited to patients with severe epilepsy. Now, HB 46 marks the program’s most significant expansion to date, and thousands of Texans have been granted access.
In anticipation of the rising demand, the Texas Department of Public Safety has conditionally granted nine TCUP dispensing organization licenses, with three more planned for early 2026. Texas’ vertically integrated licensing structure, which requires companies to cultivate, manufacture, package, and distribute the product all in-house, is now emerging as a bottleneck in the state’s newly expanded program. Because all operations must be conducted under a single license, many freshly approved providers lack the infrastructure needed to serve patients immediately.
Texas Original Compassionate Cultivation, the state’s first medical cannabis distributor, planted its first cannabis plants in 2017. Betting on Texas to follow other states’ decisions to ease access to cannabis, the company released plans for a 96,000-square-foot megafacility slated to break ground in Bastrop in August 2021. Originally estimated to be completed in 2023, the project stalled amidst uncertainty about compassionate use expansion during the 2023 legislative session. Building continued, though Texas Original reduced its target facility size to 75,000 square feet. Now, HB 46 has changed the nature of the TCUP landscape – and the megafacility is operational just in time.
On Dec. 11, just two months after HB 46 took effect, Texas Original announced the opening of its new facility, equipped with everything the company needs to scale: a hybrid greenhouse, labs for extraction and testing, and infrastructure for packaging, dispensing, distribution, and delivery logistics, according to a recent press release. Now operating Texas’ largest cannabis facility, Texas Original has uniquely positioned itself in the state’s cannabis industry.
“We made the decision five years ago to invest in building so that when legislation changed in Texas, patients wouldn’t be waiting another two years to feel the effects of a new bill,” Texas Original CEO Nico Richardson told the Chronicle. Whether or not TCUP would expand was not a gamble to him, but rather the only solution to a growing patient need.
“Texas was underserving patients who would have had access if they lived almost anywhere else. We didn’t have any ability to serve patients with an invaluable form of medicine that is available in almost every other medical market in the country,” he said.
Richardson added that some of the state’s new conditional licensees are based outside Texas, made possible by a provision in House Bill 46 that allows distributors to operate through satellite locations rather than build full-scale facilities here. Texas Original’s previous headquarters, at about a tenth of the size, will now become a satellite location.
“Once those satellite locations are approved, patients can come in like they would at a Walgreens or CVS, order their medicine, and pick it up the same day,” he said. “For operators based outside Texas, it didn’t make sense to invest heavily before the market materialized. [Texas Original] is a Texas-based company, and our entire focus is on the medical market in Texas, so we invested early.”Having already conducted its first harvest in the new facility, Texas Original is put in a prime position to continue the charge in providing medical cannabis to an expanded demographic of patients. HB 46 signaled a marked change in a state previously unwilling to recognize even the most minor benefits of medical cannabis, and with a federal hemp ban possibly nearing, the TCUP expansion is timely for individuals searching for medical cannabis solutions.
This article appears in January 9 • 2026.