The one counter
Texas Original operates a pickup point at 421 Frankford Ave in Lubbock, and it is the only collection site in the western half of the state. For Lubbock, Levelland, Plainview, and the surrounding South Plains that is genuinely useful. For Amarillo it is a two-hour drive each way, which is its own situation entirely and covered separately for the Panhandle. For Midland and Odessa it is nearly 140 miles. For El Paso it is not a real option at all.
Texas Original has named El Paso and Midland as expansion cities. Announced is not open, and nothing in this program has ever arrived early, but those two would be the largest access improvement West Texas has seen since the program started.
Distance is the actual constraint, and the fix is scheduling
Everything licensed in Texas is produced in Central Texas. El Paso sits about 550 miles from it, Amarillo about 500, the Permian Basin about 350. Delivery reaches all of them, but on cycles rather than on demand, and a missed cycle out here is measured in weeks instead of days.
The tool that solves this is already in the law: Texas permits refills of up to a 90-day supply. A West Texas patient who orders monthly is fighting the geography. One who runs a deliberate buffer, reordering with three or four weeks still on the shelf, essentially stops noticing it. Set a calendar reminder rather than trusting yourself to notice a dwindling supply.
The checkpoints, stated plainly
Interior Border Patrol checkpoints sit inland from the border, not on it: eastbound I-10 at Sierra Blanca, US-62/180 toward Carlsbad, US-54 north toward Alamogordo, and others along US-90 and US-285. They are federal jurisdiction. Cannabis is federally illegal. Your Texas prescription is a state document and it does not travel through one.
This produces the strange situation that defines cannabis in El Paso: your medicine is lawful in your living room and a federal problem forty minutes up the road, and the product sold legally twenty minutes away in New Mexico is contraband the moment it crosses back. Within Texas and away from checkpoints, transporting your own labeled prescription product is fine. The rule to internalize is directional, not quantitative.
Fort Bliss, and military families generally
Active-duty service members cannot participate, anywhere, under any state program: the UCMJ prohibition is absolute and a Texas prescription changes nothing about it. Spouses and adult dependents who are Texas residents with qualifying conditions can. The wrinkle is housing, because on-base family housing is federal property where cannabis is prohibited regardless of who in the household lawfully holds it. Families in that position should get advice from a JAG officer before ordering, not after.
What is coming, and how much to count on it
Three of the twelve conditional licensees cover this half of the state: Trulieve in Region 1 for the Panhandle and South Plains, RISE in Region 9 for the Permian Basin, and Verano in Region 10 for El Paso. All three are multistate operators who have built dispensaries before, which makes them a better bet than the Texas-only entities elsewhere on the list. They still have to clear DPS due diligence, build, and pass inspection, on a clock that runs 24 months from licensure.