Two New Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Could Be Licensed in North Texas Soon

After 10 years of running a state-regulated medical marijuana program, the Texas Compassionate Use Program (TCUP), with only three licensed dispensaries, the state preliminarily announced nine new dispensaries pending full licensing. 

Since its initial approval in 2015, the state has been gradually expanding the TCUP program to include a variety of diseases. By 2024, there were nine approved conditions that qualified for TCUP registration; however, this year, in the broadest expansion, lawmakers added chronic pain, among other conditions, such as traumatic brain injuries. They also made a legislative commitment to increasing the number of licensed dispensaries, quintupling the count by April 2026. 

The nine companies announced by the Department of Public Safety (DPS) have been issued conditional licenses, but they will not be allowed to cultivate, manufacture, distribute or sell cannabis until receiving formal approval from the state following additional evaluations. 

“As a holder of a conditional license, the licensee is subject to the department’s ongoing due diligence evaluation,” Texas DPS said in a Dec. 1 statement. “The announcement of these nine businesses today does not guarantee that these businesses will be issued final TCUP licenses to operate as dispensing organizations.”

The nine companies, two of which are in the North Texas region — Texas Patient Access and Lonestar Compassionate Care Group —  were chosen from an application period that closed in 2023. KVUE reported that the state received 132 applications during the window. A second batch of three licenses will be announced in April, chosen from a 30-day application that ran from August to September 2025. 

When residents were first allowed to register in the Compassionate Use Registry in 2017, there were only 12 patients; by the end of 2023, following significant expansions, the number had grown to 72,960. In August 2025, there were 123,308 registered patients qualified to receive a medical marijuana prescription. When chronic pain became an applicable condition in September, an additional 4,000 patients registered. 

The number of patients registered is not reflective of the number of patients actually receiving prescriptions. A 2024 report from the DPS counted 29,000 unique patients fulfilling a medical marijuana prescription in the 2023 fiscal year, marking a 135% growth over the prior year. Though only about 40% of patients registered in TCUP fulfill their prescriptions, the amount is growing much faster than the number of patients added to the registry annually. 

To match the pace of demand growth, the state needed to increase the number of licensed dispensaries. Although the latest law greatly increased accessibility to medical marijuana for thousands of patients across the state, it did not streamline the licensing process, which remains exorbitantly expensive and lengthy. While being a member of the TCUP program became easier for patients, it did not become any easier for the dispensaries hoping to supply. 

The Licensing Process

The initial application requires a non-refundable application fee of $7,356. If a dispensary is issued a license, which expires after two years, it is then required to pay an additional $488,520 fee. License renewal costs $318,511 every two years thereafter. Texas has some of the highest dispensary-associated fees in the country, creating a high barrier to entry for prospective companies. 

The companies that do have proper licensing have a lot of control over the industry by nature and have the freedom to set prices wherever they so choose. Because cannabis remains a Schedule I substance, as categorized by the Federal Drug Administration, insurance typically does not cover the costs of medical marijuana. 

Heather Fazio, director of the Texas Cannabis Policy Center, had hoped the state would look to increase competition which would likely lower the costs for consumers. A variety of products sold by the three licensed dispensaries can range in price from $60 – $150, depending on the formulation and potency. Medical marijuana in smokable flower form is not legal. All products must be 1% THC by weight, which is a higher potency than legalized market THC products that are limited to 0.3% concentration.

“Hopefully, when rulemaking is happening in October, they will bring down the licensing fees to be more reasonable for these companies,” she said to the Observer in June. “… We hope that some change, the changes that have happened in the legislature, will lead to some changes in the regulatory infrastructure and therefore make this program more accessible for patients.”

The state did not lower any of the fees. But they did allow for 2023 applicants to withdraw their applications and receive a refund by August 2025. 

The other six companies approved for a conditional license are evenly scattered across the state, but the region covering the Dallas-Fort Worth Area is the only one with two. 

How We Got Here

In 2015, Texas lawmakers, with the willing support of Gov. Greg Abbott, passed a strictly limited medical marijuana program that only accepted patients with a specific antiseizure medication-resistant form of epilepsy. It took the state two years to establish the program with licensed dispensaries. In October of 2017, the first patients were added to the TCUP database. Almost every session since then, the program has been expanded to include a variety of conditions, and the number of registered patients has grown tenfold. 

While GOP leaders seem unshakeable on legalizing recreational marijuana, the TCUP program has grown in popularity, coming close to being bipartisan. The latest bill to expand the program soared through the House with little resistance and unanimously cleared the Senate, even as a strictly partisan THC ban more prolifically struggled through the chambers. 

The potential ban was vetoed at the last minute by Abbott, resulting in a showdown between the governor and Lt. Dan Patrick. The leader of the Senate had named the ban his top priority for the session and wasted no resources in pushing the legislation to the finish line. After hours of readings, votes and floor debates, the bill made its way to Abbott, but it was not enough. 

Throughout the session, Patrick and his Republican colleagues pushed the easy and wide expansion of the TCUP program as a replacement for the thousands of recreational THC consumers, many of whom are disabled veterans, using the products to self-medicate. 

“The TCUP program, he signed that bill, that’s worthless now,” Patrick said at a press conference after the veto. “Here we pass maybe the best TCUP program, Texas for Compassionate Use, to address those with PTSD, cancer, Crohn’s disease, we add it. Who’s gonna go there now when they can go to any smoke shop and get what they want? That’s why no one grew their licenses before.”