OCR's September approval list adds seven names, including St. Thomas's last two dispensary slots

As of October 6, 2026. The Office of Cannabis Regulation posted a public notice on September 29 listing seven applicants approved for cannabis licenses as of September 10, 2026. Six of the seven have not appeared on any previous OCR approval list. Two are dispensaries on St. Thomas, which accounts for the two slots the island had left open since January.

The notice cites the Virgin Islands Cannabis Use Act and the merit-based application process in the territory’s Cannabis Rules and Regulations as the basis for the review. Scores run on the same 1,000-point scale OCR has used since the first cultivation round.

The approved applicants, as the notice lists them:

• Sea Level Concepts, St. Thomas, dispensary, 935
• Horizon Cannabis VI, St. Thomas, dispensary, 930
• MWP, LLC, St. Croix, dispensary, 925
• Nature Nurse VI, St. Thomas, research and development, 825
• Crucian Farms, St. Croix, cultivation, 800
• Swiitleaf, St. Thomas, research and development, 691
• Sunkissed Genetics, St. Croix, cultivation, 660

The St. Thomas dispensary count

The Virgin Islands Cannabis Use Act allows up to seven dispensary licenses on St. Thomas. OCR’s January 16, 2026 notice filled five of them: BLOC Dispensary, Fyah Burn Production, Coastline Dispensary, Nature Nurse Virgin Islands, and Ras Bobby Herbal Products. Sea Level Concepts and Horizon Cannabis VI are the sixth and seventh.

No other St. Thomas dispensary approvals appear in OCR’s published notices between those two dates. The office has not stated in either notice that the island’s cap is now filled, and neither notice carries a running count.

Nature Nurse adds a fourth license type

Nature Nurse already holds a conditional cultivation license from the October 2025 round, a conditional dispensary license from January, and a manufacturing approval on the list OCR posted August 4. The research and development approval on this list gives it approvals in four license categories. OCR has rendered the name three ways across its notices (Nature Nurse VI Ltd., Nature Nurse Virgin Islands, LLC, and Nature Nurse VI), so the match here is by operator rather than by exact string.

Nineteen days between the list date and the posting

The list is dated September 10. OCR posted it September 29, nineteen days later, and five days after the September 24 Cannabis Advisory Board meeting where Executive Director Joanne Moorehead walked the board through a licensing update. The slide she presented showed 26 applications in the second application round that closed September 15: 10 micro-cultivation permit applications and 16 license applications, none of them for research and development. All seven approvals on this notice predate that deadline, so none of them come from the second round.

One line of the notice does not square with OCR’s own reporting. The notice states that the list “reflects all applicants who have successfully met the approval threshold under the merit-based application process.” At the August 7 budget hearing, Moorehead told senators OCR had conditionally approved about 15 cultivation licenses, 10 dispensary licenses, 10 manufacturing licenses, two research and development licenses, and nine micro-cultivation permits, per the St. John Source. Seven names is not that total. The notice does not say whether it replaces the earlier lists or adds to them. OCR has revised published scores without explanation before, as when two cultivation scores dropped 150 points between the October 2025 and July 2026 lists.

Approved is not open

None of the seven can sell anything. Approval sets the merit score and clears the applicant to keep going. A Certificate to Operate is the document that authorizes activity, and one has been issued to a commercial grower so far: a Tier 1 cultivator on St. Croix, announced at the September 24 board meeting. No dispensary in the territory holds one.

What to watch

OCR has a Cannabis Industry Career Expo set for October 26 on St. Thomas and October 28 on St. Croix. Decisions on the 26 second-round applications filed by September 15 have not been published. The step worth watching is the first dispensary Certificate to Operate, which is what moves product onto a shelf. Moorehead told senators in August that a dispensary or two could open before the end of 2026.