The Austin Chronic: Inside Texas’ Busiest Medical Cannabis Facility
State restrictions are bonkers, but that hasn’t stopped Texas Original from expanding
By Kevin Curtin, Fri., Sept. 29, 2023
Lab coat, hairnet, blue hospital booties over my Reeboks – just give me some rubber gloves and I'm ready to perform open heart surgery. As a matter of fact, I am at a licensed medical facility … and eager to lay eyes on a beautiful patch of cannabis plants.
Along the corridor, there's a "Wall of Fame" with pictures of patients whose lives have been transformed by the medicine that Texas Original produces and dispenses. One honoree, old enough to remember marijuana's initial prohibition, now uses it for Alzheimer's, but many are young kids with seizure disorders, including one whose chart shows how a cannabis tincture reduced their weekly seizure count from over 700 to under 100.
Cannabis is medicine.
And at Texas Original's facility in Manchaca, aka south-South Austin, there are three cultivation rooms where hundreds of cannabis plants gleam green under sophisticated light systems: a nursery of mothers and clones, a room of meticulously pruned plants in the vegetative phase, and an area of mature specimens with big clusters of buds coated in glistening crystals and pillowy swirls of orange and white hairs that you just want to pet – but you don't, because this operation is so clean and sterile.
"We treat this like medicine, because it is," Texas Original CEO Nico Richardson notes.
It's also an ultra-efficient setup. Director of Cultivation Jason Sanders explains it primarily uses recycled water and yields cannabis at 155 grams per square foot – twice the industry standard.
But none of this bud will be smoked. The Texas Compassionate Use Program prohibits the prescription of cannabis flower – only tinctures and gummies made from its oils are allowed. These are all done in-house at Texas Original's 7,200-square-foot complex, which includes a science lab where cannabinoids are extracted, a food processing facility for gummies, a packaging operation, and a pickup dispensary – all demonstrating rigorous quality control.
This medicine is being produced in accordance with regulations that are both unique to Texas and medically mind-boggling. Here, prescription cannabis must be "low-THC," defined as 1% by weight. Therefore, Texas Original can dispense 10-milligram-THC gummies as long as each gummy weighs 1 gram.
"That is how Texas regulates medical cannabis, which makes no sense because if we put that [ratio] in soda it could be 1,000 mg of THC – enough to drug a donkey for a week," says Richardson, who, last session, consulted with lawmakers on the promising, bipartisan-supported House Bill 1805, which could have improved prescription guidelines and expanded qualifying conditions to include chronic pain had it received a Senate vote. "It should be a volumetric cap, so instead of 1% by weight, it should be 10 mg per dose and the doctor prescribes the amount of doses – just like any pharmaceutical."
Richardson says even as is, prescription cannabis is underutilized because many Texans don't understand that they qualify for widely applicable conditions like muscle spasticity and peripheral neuropathy.
Still, Texas Original, the first and largest of the state's three licensed dispensaries, is expanding – a large facility in Bastrop launches next year and a pickup location in North Austin just opened – despite Texas' restrictive climate.
"Economically, is it difficult? Yes. Most states go in a direction of liberalization once they start a program because they see it helps a huge number of people across the political divide. Texas is slower because of our legislative cycle, and that's frustrating for patients and businesses," admits Richardson, who has nine years' experience working in private equity cannabis investment in the U.S. and Canada. "But is it worth it? Of course, because the mission is to serve Texans and give access to as many patients as possible who suffer from serious conditions that can be treated with something way safer than some other prescription medications."
Kevin Curtin will be back in two weeks with more cannabis musings. Subscribe at austinchronicle.com/newsletters to get “The Austin Chronic” delivered to your inbox.
