Providers say Montana's medical marijuana market is booming, and that demand will only increase when it's legal to purchase recreational cannabis come January. Dispensaries are scrambling to get ready.
A few times a day, someone from out of town will walk into one of Paulson Palmer's three dispensaries in northwest Montana asking if they can buy marijuana. The answer is almost always no.
While Palmer's Fruit Factory can sell cannabis to Montana residents with a medical marijuana card, it will not be legal to sell it for non-medical adult use until Jan. 1, 2022 - a message that might not be clear to out-of-state tourists who may have heard that weed has been legalized in Big Sky Country but haven't closely followed the new law.
For adult-use marijuana advocates, the fact that customers are al...