First brick-and-mortar pickup location for prescription cannabis opens in Houston
Houston’s first permanent pickup location for medical marijuana opened Tuesday, giving patients another option for obtaining their prescription cannabis.
Texas Original, the state’s largest medical marijuana provider, opened a 1,776square-foot facility on Houston Avenue in First Ward. The location offers a full range of cannabis products, including gummies, tinctures and lozenges.
The brick-and-mortar location offers another option to patients, Texas Original CEO Morris Denton said. Most patients get their prescription delivered to their homes, but they need to be present to sign for the delivery and verify their identity. At the new location, they can arrange to pick up their prescription when it’s convenient.
“From a patient’s perspective, it makes it a lot more convenient and a lot more flexible,” Denton said. “You can come by when it makes the most amount of sense for you.”
The pickup process will be similar to home delivery. Patients will need to provide their prescription and ID and answer a few basic questions to verify their identity, Denton said. The process will take less than five minutes.
State regulations prohibit Texas Originals from storing medical marijuana at the new location, so the Houston location will not be able to take walk-in orders for same-day pickup, Denton said. Any prescriptions that are scheduled for pickup will need to be shipped each day from the company’s Austin dispensary.
Texas Original has 13 pickup locations across the state, but many of them — including in Katy and north Houston — offer once-a-week pickup at places, including doctor’s offices. The new Houston location is the company’s first permanent storefront, patients can also pick up from the Austin dispensary.
Texas Originals is considering more pickup locations in other large cities, including Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio. The company could also open more locations in Houston in the future, Denton said.
“We know, in order for us to be truly patient-driven and customer-centric, we’ll need multiple locations in the Houston market,” he said. “But you can’t get to two without getting to one. So this is the first, and there will likely be additional ones that will be coming soon.”
Texas Original provides medical marijuana to thousands of patients in the Houston area alone, Denton said. Overall, more than 16,000 Texans were registered and eligible to obtain medical marijuana as of December, according to data from the state’s Department of Public Safety.
Texans can obtain medical marijuana through the state’s compassionate use program, which is overseen by the DPS. Physicians who are registered through the program can prescribe low tetrahydrocannabinols, or THC, cannabis for medical use.
The program is open to individuals living with epilepsy; seizure disorders; multiple sclerosis; amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS); spasticity; autism; any form of cancer; an incurable neurodegenerative disease; or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Last year, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law an expansion of the program that provided access to anyone living with PTSD or any form of cancer. Previously, only patients with terminal cancer were eligible.
The new law also doubled the amount of THC allowed in medical marijuana to 1 percent.
Compassionate Cultivation is one of three licensed dispensing organizations in Texas, along with Fluent and Goodblend.
The Texas Original location, 1714 Houston, is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Orders must be placed by 5 p.m. for next-day pickup.