AUSTIN – Nine cannabis providers were tentatively added Monday to the state’s rapidly expanding medical marijuana program, dramatically increasing the number of dispensaries that can offer medical-grade, prescription-only THC treatments to qualified patients, Texas Department of Public Safety officials said.

The new companies, if they pass a final evaluation by the state, will join the three current license holders in the 10-year-old Texas Compassionate Use Program and be allowed to cultivate, manufacture, distribute and/or sell medical cannabis products through the program.

Three more “conditional licenses” will be awarded by next April, DPS officials said.

Known as TCUP, the program serves about 116,000 patients in what has been one of the nation’s most anemic state medical marijuana programs. It’s a number state leaders and other medical marijuana supporters hope will grow now that lawmakers expanded the program earlier this year. The program is administered by the DPS.

The expansion comes as the state’s hemp industry – the legal, recreational side of the cannabis market in Texas with more than 9,000 licensed retailers – wrestles with a potential federal ban on all hemp-based consumable items. Congress recently voted to make them illegal by November 2026, although there is movement in Washington D.C. to pass a law regulating the products and pre-empting the threatened ban.

A statewide ban in Texas failed to become law after Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed it in June, saying it not only contrasted federal law allowing the products but also contradicted the idea that adults should be allowed to partake in certain substances as a matter of choice. He has since directed state health officials and alcohol regulators to enforce a 21-and-up age limit on those products.

Executives at the state’s largest medical-marijuana provider, Texas Original, adamantly pushed for the unsuccessful hemp ban earlier this year, saying the unregulated market threatened the existence of TCUP. On Monday, they celebrated.

“This expansion is an important step toward broader patient access of medical cannabis across Texas,” Nico Richardson, CEO at Texas Original, said in a statement. “With these new licenses, the broader list of qualifying conditions and new treatment options allowed under [the new law], patients gain more choices—new formulations, consistent dosing, and better delivery methods—so they get the care they need.”

Raising the number of providers to 12, and eventually 15, is a step in the right direction toward better access and building a program that’s comparable to those in other states, said Nicholas Fallon, Texas market president for Goodblend, a current TCUP provider based in San Antonio.

“States with comparable medical cannabis populations, like Florida, have more than twenty operators, which helps meet patient demand,” Fallon said. “And at a time when many Texans have relied on unregulated hemp products with inconsistent dosing and no oversight, expanding access to regulated medical cannabis is more important than ever.”

The consumable-hemp retail industry has fought hard to temper the excitement around the larger TCUP with skepticism – about its availability even after the expansion, about the reliability of the selection process and about the information available on several of companies themselves – all of which had already applied to be next in line before the new law had been passed. Several are based outside Texas.

“Texans deserve a medical cannabis program built on transparency, not mystery LLCs and undisclosed ownership,” said Jay Maguire, co-founder of CRAFT, a standards setting and credentialing organization for the cannabis industry nationwide. “What DPS revealed this week raises real questions about who is actually behind some of these conditional licenses, and whether they have any record of compliance or public accountability. Patients shouldn’t be asked to trust companies no one can vet, especially in a system already strained by years of limited access and uneven oversight.”

The new TCUP law, which passed with near-unanimous approval in the waning days of the legislative session last spring, allows for up to 15 licensees to administer medicines containing tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive agent in marijuana. Marijuana cannot be sold recreationally in Texas. Monday’s announcement brings the total to 12. More could be added next year.

The nine new providers and the public health regions they’ll serve are:

• Verano Texas LLC, in the El Paso region
• Trulieve TX Inc. in the Panhandle
• Texas Patient Access LLC in North Texas
• Lonestar Compassionate Care Group LLC in North Texas
• Lone Star Bioscience Inc. in San Antonio and Central Texas
• PC TX OPCO LLC/PharmaCann in the Houston area
• Story of Texas LLC in the Houston area
• Texa OP/TexaRx in the Rio Grande Valley
• Dilatso LLC in North Texas

“DPS will be requesting additional information from these businesses and will not be invoicing any dispensing organization licensing fees until the additional due diligence evaluations are completed and passed,” DPS officials said in a statement. “The announcement of these nine businesses today does not guarantee that these businesses will be issued final TCUP licenses.”

The expansion also put a number of other measures in place that lawmakers promised would widely increase access. Those measures include increasing the concentration of THC allowed in doses, letting customers use inhalers or vaporizers to access the medication and allowing more dispensary and storage sites across the state so prices can come down, deliveries can be faster and pickup is easier.

Lawmakers also added several ailments to the list of health conditions that would qualify patients for the program, including Crohn’s and other irritable bowel conditions, traumatic brain injury and chronic pain. The list also includes post-traumatic stress disorder and cancer.

Some supporters of the medical marijuana program stipulate that even after the expansion, the program has drawbacks and still isn’t the answer for every person who seeks over-the-counter hemp-derived cannabinoids that may soon become illegal, such as THC-A, for problems with appetite, sleep and anxiety problems.

The TCUP program does not supply patients with official ID cards stating they’re in the program, potentially jeopardizing them if they are found with a prescription dose of marijuana. There are also no protections in the law for TCUP patients who are subjected to drug tests while on probation or parole.