The state's densest concentration of qualifying patients got zero new licenses.
Fort Cavazos is one of the largest military installations in the world, and the community
around it holds an enormous population of veterans with exactly the conditions HB 46 was
expanded to cover. When Texas handed out twelve new dispensary licenses, this region
received none of them. That is not an oversight worth arguing about; it is a fact worth
planning around.
Active duty: this program is not available to you. The UCMJ prohibits
marijuana for service members regardless of state law, and a Texas prescription is no
defense. This page is written for veterans, retirees, dependents, and the civilian community
around the post.
What Region 7 actually means for you
Texas awards dispensary licenses by public health region rather than by city. Region 7 is a
large one: Austin, Waco, Temple, Bryan-College Station, Killeen, and Fort Cavazos. Across
both phases of the HB 46 expansion it received zero conditional awards, on reasoning that
presumably runs through Austin, where both major incumbent operators are already
headquartered.
That logic holds for Austin and collapses seventy miles north. Killeen is not a suburb of
Austin, its patients do not commute there, and nothing about an operator's Bastrop
cultivation facility puts a counter in Bell County. Every other underserved corner of the
state now has a named licensee obligated to serve it. West Texas has RISE and Trulieve, El
Paso has Verano, the Valley has TexaRx. The half of Region 7 that was never well served has
nobody, and no timeline.
Which means delivery, and that is genuinely fine
The licensed operators deliver to every address in Bell and Coryell County, and for the
overwhelming majority of patients here that is simply what the program is rather than a
compromise. There is no counter to miss and no window to schedule around. You order online,
a courier verifies you against the state registry at the door, and you pay cash or CanPay.
The one thing worth planning: consolidate. Texas permits refills of up to a 90-day supply,
the free-delivery threshold sits at $200 with the operators that publish one, and a longer
route cycle out here rewards fewer, larger orders anyway.
How delivery works covers the terms operator by operator.
The evaluation, and the VA question underneath it
The visit is telemedicine and takes about fifteen minutes, which means no drive to Temple
or Austin and no waiting room. What makes this population different is documentation: a
great many patients here arrive with a VA rating decision letter, and that letter is a
dated federal record describing a condition in clinical terms. For PTSD, chronic pain, or
traumatic brain injury it does most of the work that a first-time civilian patient has to
construct from scratch. Bring it.
The VA itself cannot help you here and it is worth understanding why. VA physicians are
federal employees and federally barred from prescribing or recommending cannabis. What VA
policy is equally explicit about is the other direction: participating in a state program
does not cost you benefits, eligibility, or care. Both halves of that are true at once, and
the second half is the one veterans most often get wrong.
Where Killeen patients actually collect, if they collect at all
There is no pickup counter in Bell County. These are the nearest ones, and both are a
committed drive rather than a stop on the way home: Waco is roughly an hour up I-35, the
Austin-area sites closer to ninety minutes south. Addresses verified 2026-10-12. All are
order-ahead; none is a shop you browse.
The Waco site is a clinic hosting a handoff on medical office hours, so it holds no inventory
and its window is narrow. For nearly everyone in Killeen, Harker Heights, Copperas Cove, and
Belton the honest answer is that the drive is not worth it and delivery is the program.
Full statewide location table →
What brings Bell County patients in
The conditions here track two decades of deployments more closely than they track the general
Texas population. PTSD and traumatic brain injury are the reason most people on this page are
reading it, and chronic pain from service-connected injury is close behind. If you are still
working, read the testing page before anything else, because contractor and federal-adjacent
employment is common around the post and gets no protection at all.
No, and there is no version of this that works. The UCMJ prohibits marijuana for service members regardless of any state program, a positive urinalysis is a career-ending event rather than a disciplinary one, and no Texas prescription is a defense at a court-martial. Nobody selling evaluations will tell you this plainly, so here it is: if you are in uniform, close this page. It becomes available to you at separation, not before.
What about my spouse, or my parents?
Different answer entirely. The UCMJ binds the service member, not the household. A military spouse, an adult dependent, a retiree, or a veteran who is a Texas resident with a qualifying condition can be evaluated and prescribed like any other Texan. Two cautions worth taking seriously. On-post housing at Fort Cavazos is federal property, where cannabis is prohibited no matter what the state says. And a service member sharing a household with legally possessed cannabis is in a position worth raising with a JAG officer beforehand rather than afterward.
Why did Killeen get no new dispensary license?
Because the license map is drawn by public health region, and Region 7 received zero awards across both phases of the HB 46 expansion. Region 7 covers Austin, Waco, Temple, Bryan-College Station, Killeen, and Fort Cavazos. The defensible reasoning is that the incumbent operators are already headquartered in Austin, which is true of Austin and says nothing about a garrison town seventy miles up I-35. Every other underserved part of Texas now has a licensee on the hook for it. Region 7 does not.
So where does my medicine actually come from?
Delivery, in practice. Licensed operators reach every address in Bell and Coryell County, and for most patients here that is simply how the program works rather than a fallback. If you want to collect in person, the nearest counters are the partner site in Waco and the Austin-area pickup points, which are a real drive rather than an errand.
Does using the program affect my VA benefits or my rating?
No. VA policy is explicit that veterans participating in state medical cannabis programs do not lose benefits, eligibility, or care, and a VA provider can note your use in your record without triggering anything. What VA physicians cannot do is prescribe it, complete a state form, or pay for it, because they are federal employees. That is the gap the civilian telehealth route exists to close. Tell your VA team anyway, especially if you are on opioids, benzodiazepines, or sleep medication, because the interaction conversation is the one that actually protects you.
Is my VA disability rating useful for qualifying?
Very. It is not a legal shortcut, and no rating entitles you to a prescription, but a rating decision letter is a dated federal document describing your condition in clinical language. For PTSD or chronic pain, that is precisely the documented history a TCUP physician wants and precisely what most first-time patients arrive without. Bring the letter or your VA problem list to the video visit.
I work as a defense contractor on post. Does that change things?
Yes, and it is the exposure most people here underestimate. A contractor working under a federal contract usually sits inside the Drug-Free Workplace Act and a testing program written to federal standards, and access to a federal installation carries its own conditions. A state prescription does not reach any of it. Get the written policy from your employer, not a verbal answer from a supervisor, before you book anything.
Will anyone at the base find out?
CURT is a Department of Public Safety registry that prescribing physicians and licensed dispensaries query. It is not shared with the Department of Defense, it is not a public record, and it does not appear in a background check. The realistic exposure in a garrison town is not the registry, it is a delivery arriving at on-post housing, which is a separate and much more concrete problem. Deliver off post.
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