Texas, which signed its Texas Compassionate Use Act on June 1, 2015, has awarded three conditional licenses to cultivate, process and dispense low-THC cannabis to intractable epilepsy patients. Of 43 applicants, one was disqualified for unspecified reasons. Each of the remaining 42 were scored by a review panel with eight Department of Public Safety employees who scored the applications across six categories, including Security (20%), Accountability (20%), Financial Responsibility (10%), Technical and Technological Ability (20%), Infrastructure (20%) and Cover Letter (10%).

The highest ranked applicants included Cansortium Texas, Compassionate Cultivation and Surterra Texas, and they will now undergo onsite inspections. The bill requires that final licensing is complete by September 1st. The state provided a ranking of each of the 42 applicants by score as well as a breakdown of the components contributing to their scores:

Cansortium Texas 93.62333
Compassionate Cultivation 92.49333
Surterra Texas 89.67667
Arete Holistics 88.83667
GB Sciences 85.91667
Col. Care Texas 85.605
VMG 83.52333
Mercury Copper Farms 80.71167
Lone Star Compassion Center 80.50333
Paradigm Pharm 80.055 L
ionnac 79.86
GTGC 79.13833
GreenWell 78.88167
Big Star 78.22167
Texas Wellness 78.20833
Alamo CBD 76.96833
Texas Compassionate Care 75.7
CannOrganics 74.52
Auxilium Farms 74.23667
Medicus 72.41 J and L Plants 72.205
Texas Has Compassion 72.16333
Texas Compassionate Enterprise 71.98
Bayou City 70.27167
Aviva 67.31833
Craft Harvest 63.725
Sensi Enterprises 63.26667
Epilepsy CBD 61.34
Texas Re-Leaf 57.38833
RXTX 55.93667
Travis Pharmaceutical 53.37167
Navarro Growers 52.50833
Bocanna 51.98833
Blue Bonnet 51.46667
Bootlegger 50.29167
Dallas Progressive Health 50.025
Texas Cannabis 49.98667
PowerBerman 43.95667
SLAMMA Solutions 33.855
Cannliv 22.225
ESG Epsilon 20.92
Lime Star Leaf 16.225

Surterra is a name that may be familiar to readers, as it is one of the seven license holders in Florida. Two publicly-traded companies, GB Sciences (OTC: GBLX) and Indoor Harvest (OTC: INQD), which is in the process of merging with Alamo CBD, were among the applicants, with GB Sciences ranking 5th and Alamo CBD 16th. Surprisingly, Columbia Care, which is one of the largest operators of vertically integrated medical cannabis dispensaries in the country, failed to win a license, scoring 6th.

Breaking News by Alan Brochstein, CFA

Based in Houston, Alan leverages his experience as founder of online community 420 Investor, the first and still largest due diligence platform focused on the publicly-traded stocks in the cannabis industry. With his extensive network in the cannabis community, Alan continues to find new ways to connect the industry and facilitate its sustainable growth. At New Cannabis Ventures, he is responsible for content development and strategic alliances. Before shifting his focus to the cannabis industry in early 2013, Alan, who began his career on Wall Street in 1986, worked as an independent research analyst following over two decades in research and portfolio management. A prolific writer, with over 650 articles published since 2007 at Seeking Alpha, where he has 70,000 followers, Alan is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and a frequent source to the media, including the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, and Bloomberg TV. Contact Alan: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Email