Wright lives in Prairie County, the state’s fifth-least-populated county, with nearly 1,100 people. She already drives about 35 minutes to get to the marijuana dispensary nearest her home, which is 2½ hours northeast of Billings. And now she wonders how much more difficult it will be to get the cannabis she uses to relieve the chronic pain she developed after a 2017 spinal surgery.

“I’m really worried about supplies and what it’s going to cost,” she said.

For Wright and the approximately 55,000 other Montanans who hold medical marijuana cards and use cannabis for cancer, glaucoma, Crohn’s disease, central nervous system disorders and other ailments, the question is how will recreational marijuana affect their ability to access their medicine.

Other states have had shortages soon after their recreational marijuana markets opened. In January 2020, when recreational marijuana became legal in Illinois, . The same thing happened in and when the recreational market opened in those states.

Pepper Petersen president and CEO of the Montana Cannabis Guild and a medical marijuana provider in Helena, said he’s been telling his patients to stock up because he thinks the state’s dispensaries will run out of pot in the short term.

“We are going to have cannabis shortages. Access will be a problem until supply can catch up with demand,” Petersen said. “How can we produce enough product for thousands of new users in January? The answer is we can’t.”

In Wright’s case, stocking up isn’t an option because of her fixed income, she said. She wonders how high the price of a pre-rolled joint, which now costs nearly $8, will rise and whether she’ll have to drive even farther to get her medicine.

Jared Moffat, a campaign manager for the Marijuana Policy Project, said a state’s market usually takes six to 12 months to stabilize after recreational cannabis becomes legal. One reason marijuana markets are unstable is that possessing and distributing the drug remain illegal under federal law, so moving products across state lines is not an option for dealing with a shortage. Everything that is sold in a state must be grown in that state.

Adding to the potential supply-chain problem is that Montana has restricted who can sell cannabis, at least initially. The legislation that set up the framework for Montana’s recreational marijuana market , meaning newly licensed sellers can’t get into the market until July 2023.

That leaves medical marijuana customers to compete with recreational users for a limited supply of cannabis.

About 80 dispensaries — just 18% of Montana’s 451 licensed dispensaries — plan to exclusively serve holders of medical marijuana cards, according to Czelsi Gómez, spokesperson for the Montana Department of Revenue, which oversees the state’s marijuana programs. The rest plan to cater to both recreational and medical users or to only recreational users.

Some states that have legalized recreational cannabis — including New Jersey and Illinois — have required dispensaries to maintain enough stock to ensure that medical users can get what they need.

Montana has not instituted such a rule. But Gomez said the 80 dispensaries that will serve only medical marijuana users will protect patients. “We believe the medical-only establishments are the safeguard for ensuring medical marijuana is available to registered cardholders,” Gomez said.

Some dispensary owners said they will reserve some of their supplies to ensure medical customers don’t run out. But others said they don’t plan on holding back, arguing that would be bad for business.

Barbie Turner, a co-owner of Alternative ReLeaf, a dispensary with locations in Missoula, Polson and Libby, said she is worried about where medical users will get their cannabis. She said that if serving medical customers requires her to stop selling cannabis to recreational users, she will.

“Not only do our medical patients have a need, they’re the ones who built up these businesses. They’re the ones who built this industry,” she said. “So I think we have an ethical responsibility to take care of them, just like they have taken care of us.”

How big the recreational marijuana market will be is unclear. A cited survey results from 2017 and 2018 that found about 14% of Montana adults said they used cannabis in the previous month, compared with 9% of adults nationally.

Petersen and others said more people might become recreational users once cannabis products that can be smoked or eaten become easier to buy.

Turner said that she and her employees have been working for months to make sure they have enough marijuana but that she’s still worried about the supply. There are limits, both legally and financially, on how much a provider can grow, she said.

Shops will get some help, she said, with the state’s wholesale market opening in January, meaning that dispensaries will be able to sell to one another in bulk.

Although many dispensaries — especially in college towns such as Missoula and Bozeman — are bracing for shortages this month, Erin Bolster said she thinks the real test of marijuana supplies will come in the summer, when millions of tourists visit Yellowstone and Glacier national parks.

Bolster owns Tamarack Cannabis in the Flathead Valley, a popular tourist destination not far from Glacier National Park. In summer 2020, long before dispensaries could sell recreational cannabis, Bolster said, she would get one or two walk-ins and two or three calls a day from tourists who had heard Montana had legalized adult-use marijuana and wanted to see if they could buy.

Come summer, she thinks, the number of customers will skyrocket. That could mean even more competition for Montana’s medical marijuana there and in other popular destinations.

“We’ve been able to expand production,” Bolster said. “But the question is ‘Did we expand enough?’”

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The Yellowstone Club — a ski and golf resort just north of Yellowstone National Park that counts Bill Gates, Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel among its members — has asked the Montana Department of Environmental Quality for a permit to allow it to use wastewater for snowmaking operations on its ski slopes.

About a dozen other ski areas across the U.S. have used wastewater to make artificial snow before, but the Yellowstone Club would be the first in Montana. The technique has also been used in .

Officials at the club say the program would not only ensure the slopes can open on time, usually in late November and early December, but also replenish the area’s watershed and keep streams running longer into the season. And it would allow the growing Big Sky resort area to handle its increasing wastewater volumes.

“It’s an outside-the-box-idea,” said Rich Chandler, environmental manager for the club. “But it also checks a lot of boxes.”

Is it a safe plan for the rich and famous who will occasionally ingest it when they wipe out on the slopes? The short answer from state officials is yes. The method is safe for people and the environment as long as there is close monitoring to ensure contamination levels stay within standards, according to an environmental analysis.

But, the state officials said, that analysis did not study potential pollutants for which there are no environmental standards in wastewater, such as traces of prescription drugs.

A similar effort to turn wastewater into snow was controversial at the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort near Flagstaff. To combat snowless winters there, the resort in the early 2000s purchased wastewater from Flagstaff and pumped it from the treatment plant to the ski area, where it would be turned into snow and sprayed onto the San Francisco Peaks.

That drew protests from the Hopi Tribe, which said the artificial snow posed risks to public health and the environment and would desecrate a mountain it considers sacred. from moving ahead with the plan. In December 2012, the ski area fired up its snow guns and started making powder.

During the legal fight, environmental groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, raised about how wastewater can reduce local aquatic populations and cause some male fish to take on female appearances and reproductive traits.

Wastewater’s effect on human health also raises concerns. Although modern water treatment can eliminate many pollutants — and, in some instances, — some elements still escape the process, specifically pharmaceuticals. The research is in its infancy, but a 2017 study by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization found that only half of the pharmaceutical compounds were removed in the water treatment process. It noted that evidence suggests some of the chemicals could affect human reproductive systems, too, just as studies have shown on aquatic life.

“Modern wastewater treatment plants mostly reduce solids and bacteria by oxidizing the water. They were not designed to deal with complex chemical compounds,” said Birguy Lamizana-Diallo, program management officer at the United Nations Environment Program and an expert on wastewater treatment.

Officials in Montana are quick to point out differences between their plan and what happened in Arizona. For one, the ski area near Flagstaff often makes all its snow from treated wastewater, whereas the Yellowstone Club will use it, at least initially, on only about 10% of the 2,700 acres of skiable terrain and usually only in October and November to create a base layer for its ski runs. Come December, most of the snow people would be skiing and riding on would be natural.

But perhaps the biggest difference between the two projects is the level of support the Yellowstone Club has for its plan, which is backed by environmental and conservation groups including the Gallatin River Task Force, the Association of Gallatin Agricultural Irrigators and Trout Unlimited.

The idea to turn Big Sky’s wastewater into snow has been brewing for more than a decade and emerged from a collaboration between the Yellowstone Club and other local groups concerned about depleted snowpack due to climate change, which could starve area creeks and streams of water later in the season.

Yellowstone already uses treated wastewater to hydrate its golf courses, and in 2011 it teamed up with the Montana DEQ and the Gallatin River Task Force to see if they could safely turn the same water into snow. Chandler, the club’s environmental manager, said they successfully turned a half-million gallons of wastewater into 2 acres of snow about 18 inches deep.

Kristin Gardner, executive director of the Gallatin River Task Force, said the snowmaking process effectively re-treats the wastewater by blasting it out of a filtered snowmaking gun that atomizes the water.

“It’s an added layer of security for the human health side of things,” Chandler said.

Chandler said the information gathered from the pilot study forms the core of the ski club’s application with the Montana DEQ. A draft permit tentatively approving the project has been issued by the state agency, and a final decision is expected later this year.

Officials at DEQ said that the wastewater used to make snow will be treated to the highest standards possible and that they can issue permits only to projects that will not pollute state waters. But the effect of pharmaceuticals remains uncharted territory. Amy Steinmetz, public water supply bureau chief, said that neither the DEQ nor the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has standards to specifically treat wastewater for pharmaceuticals.

“The science is still emerging on that,” she said.

If the DEQ does issue its final permit this year, the Yellowstone Club will most likely begin turning wastewater into snow in late 2022. It would then be required to post signage advising skiers not to consume the snow. Similar signage can be found at Arizona Snowbowl.

Chandler said that the Yellowstone Club is proud of the collaborative work and that, ultimately, the process will benefit the community and watershed. Making more snow and increasing the snowpack during the winter, Chandler estimates, will increase the summer runoff in area creeks by about 19 days, a big win in the increasingly arid West. It’s also better than the alternative, he said: treating the wastewater and then just pushing it directly into the Gallatin River.

“It’s not like the Earth is producing more water, so we have to use what we have effectively,” he said.

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When Rep. Lola Sheldon-Galloway introduced a bill in the Montana House two years ago that would have prohibited abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, the Republican legislator knew it was unlikely to survive the veto pen of the Democratic governor.

Sure enough, then-Gov. Steve Bullock vetoed that bill and two other anti-abortion measures passed by the Republican-led state legislature. In his veto message, Bullock wrote that “for over 40 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that the U.S. Constitution prohibits a state from banning abortion.”

But now Bullock’s gone, replaced by Republican Greg Gianforte, who has promised to sign two proposed measures that would put new limits on abortion. And abortion-rights advocates worry the court ruling that Bullock based his vetoes on — the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision — is on shaky ground.

The Supreme Court tilted further right with last year’s confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, giving the high court a makeup of six justices appointed by Republican presidents and three appointed by Democrats.

That has emboldened lawmakers in Montana and other right-leaning states to introduce dozens of anti-abortion bills this year in the hope that the high court will hear lawsuits against new state laws and side with the states. The goal is to chip away at Roe v. Wade.

According to Kristin Ford, national communications director for NARAL Pro-Choice America, more than 60 bills have been introduced or passed in state legislatures so far this year to restrict abortion. Most are in conservative-leaning states like Montana, Kansas and Wyoming.

“These legislators are willing to do whatever it takes to advance their extreme agenda of gutting Roe v. Wade and pushing abortion care as far out of reach as possible,” Ford said. “With Roe in the crosshairs, the stakes for women, people who are pregnant and families are higher than ever.”

Ford and other abortion-rights advocates said any one of those bills could be challenged and make its way to the Supreme Court.

That’s the apparent aim of the conservative state lawmakers pushing bills. In Montana, legislators have introduced six anti-abortion measures so far this year, including Sheldon-Galloway’s proposed ban on abortions after 20 weeks.

“If this legislation made it all the way to the Supreme Court, that would be a good thing, because we need to revisit Roe v. Wade,” Sheldon-Galloway said.

Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League, based in Chicago, said the rash of bills exemplifies the changing methods of the anti-abortion movement. When his father founded the Pro-Life Action League in the 1970s, the organization’s goal was simply to get the Roe v. Wade decision overturned, either in the courts or in the statehouses. But now anti-abortion groups are taking a piecemeal approach.

He said it’s more likely that the current Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade incrementally rather than all at once.

“Will this court overturn Roe v. Wade? It’s possible,” Scheidler said. “But I think we’re more likely to see this court put more restrictions on abortion. I think five years from now we’ll realize that Roe v. Wade was slowly overturned without it ever making a big headline.”

For anti-abortion groups, pushing legislation through at the state level may be their only option since Democrats control Congress and the White House. President Joe Biden has said he wants to “codify” Roe v. Wade and appoint federal judges who will respect the precedent.

Sheldon-Galloway said her bill, dubbed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, would protect unborn children who might feel pain during an abortion.

Abortion advocates said that the bill is based on dubious science and that abortions at that point in pregnancy are rare and usually happen only for medical reasons. Similar bills are being introduced in Florida, Hawaii, New Jersey and Oregon.

“There are very few abortions that happen after 20 weeks, and when they do they usually occur because of a significant medical issue,” said Alison James, chairperson of Montanans for Choice, an abortion-rights group. “These are usually wanted pregnancies, and so these unnecessary laws put women and families through the wringer. It will treat them like criminals.”

Groups like Montanans for Choice have stepped up their efforts this year because they know that any abortion bill that passes the Montana legislature will be signed into law. Other bills working their way through the legislature would prohibit people from accessing abortion medication through the mail and require doctors to offer an ultrasound before terminating a pregnancy. Another would create a ballot initiative asking Montanans to decide whether fetuses that live through an abortion are people with legal rights.

Similar legislation has been introduced in a dozen other states, according to the National Right to Life Committee.

Nicole Smith, a fellow of the Society of Family Planning and a board member for Montanans for Choice, said it is highly likely that any abortion bills that become law would be challenged in court, making the states the first battleground in the new laws’ journey to the Supreme Court.

“We’re seeing an onslaught of bills,” Smith said. “And it will result in a legal battle.”

[Correction: This article was updated at 2 p.m. ET on March 2, 2021, to correct that Gov. Greg Gianforte promised to sign two anti-abortion measures into law.]

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This fall, South Dakota became the first state in the U.S. to legalize both medical marijuana and recreational marijuana in the same election. Haugaard, who long opposed any form of marijuana legalization, now must participate in the creation of a medical marijuana program.

South Dakota voters enshrined legal marijuana in the state’s constitution. So if Haugaard had any thoughts about reversing the initiative once lawmakers reconvene on Jan. 12, they’ve been dashed.

“With a constitutional amendment, there’s really not much we can do about it. It’s written in stone until it’s repealed,” Haugaard said.

South Dakota is one of a handful of states in which voters both approved marijuana ballot questions and elected Republicans to lead state governments. Montana and Arizona, two other states in which Republicans control (or will soon control) the governor’s office and legislature, also backed recreational marijuana at the ballot box. Mississippi passed a measure legalizing medical marijuana.

New Jersey, which has a Democratic governor and Democratic-majority legislature, also passed a recreational marijuana ballot question.

Many conservative lawmakers oppose the legalization of marijuana, an illegal drug under federal law. But they are discovering obstacles to simply passing bills to reverse the initiatives when state legislatures return to work in January. Some marijuana opponents, realizing the limitations to altering a constitutional amendment, are turning to the courts or local officials to undo the measures or at least blunt the effects of legal pot.

Before the November election, 11 states and Washington, D.C., had legalized recreational marijuana, most of them left-leaning states, with exceptions like Alaska. An additional 21 states allow medical marijuana. In the wake of the election, 15 states will have legalized recreational marijuana and 35 will allow medical marijuana.

In conservative states like Montana, where passage of a bill can change or negate a ballot initiative, one thing giving lawmakers pause is that many voters who elected them also approved the legalization of marijuana use for adults 21 and up.

In Montana, 57% of voters approved the recreational marijuana initiative — the same share received by President Donald Trump. In South Dakota, 54% voted for recreational marijuana and a whopping 70% approved medical marijuana. In Arizona, the recreational pot proposition also passed easily.

Those kinds of margins are what caused state Rep. Derek Skees to reconsider a bill he was drafting to repeal the Montana ballot measure in anticipation of its passage.

Skees that after it became clear voters supported it — while also supporting Republican candidates for office up and down the ballot — he decided to shelve it.

“There’s no way I’m going to try to overturn the will of Montana,” Skees told the newspaper.

Haugaard said opposition to the South Dakota measure was derailed by the pandemic and voters never got the message from opponents about the potential negative impacts of legalization.

Proponents of legalization spent nearly $800,000 on their campaign in South Dakota — , a pro-legalization group that works across the country — and five times what opponents of ballot measures raised.

Colorado, the first state to allow recreational use of marijuana in 2014, is often held up as the poster child for what can happen. Proponents say the state has benefited from increased tax income and economic activity. But opponents, including Haugaard, since legalization to explain why they think it’s a bad idea.

“That side of the story wasn’t told and had it been told I think this vote would have gone differently,” Haugaard said.

Marijuana opponents aren’t waiting to see what state lawmakers do, if anything — they’re going to court. The Pennington County, South Dakota, sheriff and the superintendent of the South Dakota Highway Patrol have filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the marijuana amendment. The , and that the state was paying for part of the suit. Noem was a vocal opponent of legalization during the campaign.

Should the legal challenge fail, the amendment is scheduled to take effect July 1 and, according to the governor’s office, it will be up to the state health department to implement it. The legislature will have more control over how the medical marijuana program will work. Haugaard said that will be a big focus of the 37-day session.

Opponents in Montana are also asking the courts to disallow recreational marijuana. Steve Zabawa, a Billings car dealer who has campaigned against legalized marijuana for years, said in his lawsuit that what the voters passed would illegally take power from state lawmakers by designating where tax revenue will go.

Zabawa blamed its passage at the ballot box on pro-marijuana advocacy groups that so outraised and outspent opponents of the measure that he compared it to David and Goliath.

“They candy-coated this deal. They lied to the entire state of Montana by saying that this would benefit veterans and fish and wildlife,” Zabawa said. “They crossed a line and we’re calling them on it.”

Zabawa said that if the courts don’t block recreational marijuana, he’s hopeful that Montana’s Republican-controlled Statehouse will stymie its implementation.

“I just don’t think there’s a lot of love for marijuana in Montana,” Zabawa said.

In Arizona, a recreational marijuana ballot measure was rejected by voters just four years ago. This year it passed by a wide margin. The state’s voters also chose Joe Biden over President Donald Trump, the first time a Democrat won the presidential election in the state since 1996.

It’s unlikely Arizona’s Republican-led legislature can do anything to stop implementation without a three-quarters majority.

State lawmakers’ hands may be tied, but the initiative did give municipalities some power to restrict its use. The day after the initiative passed, that would limit which type of businesses could sell marijuana and prohibited its use in public places.

The declaration was based on language written by the League of Arizona Cities and Towns and given to members prior to Election Day.

One of the major backers of the state ballot measures is the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that supports sweeping marijuana policy changes across the country. Deputy Director Matthew Schweich said this election showed how the public’s opinion on marijuana is rapidly evolving.

Schweich said he believes the results of the 2020 election bode well for future legalization efforts in states and even at the federal level. Because of that growing support, he dismissed any chance Montana or South Dakota could derail recreational legalization but added that his organization will do whatever it can to fight those efforts.

“This is a bipartisan issue [and] I think we’re at a tipping point. We’ve passed it in big states and small states, liberal states and conservative states,” he said. “We’re feeling pretty good. We believe that 2021 is our year.”

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Though she saw few people wearing masks from her volunteer station in the fair’s hospitality tent in southern Idaho earlier this month, she said she wasn’t concerned. Stutzman, 63, had been attending the fair off and on for 30 years, and she didn’t consider this year that different. People in rural communities know how to respect one another’s space, she said, and don’t have time to “fret and worry” about the coronavirus.

“Common sense is knowing that COVID-19 is in the picture,” she said, yet not allowing fear to “dictate how we live.”

Hundreds of state and county fairs typically take place across the U.S. each year. They are a centerpiece for the agricultural industry — particularly for the 4-H kids who raise livestock all year to show off at their local events. Thousands of people are drawn to small towns for the concerts, rodeos, races and carnivals that flesh out the experience.

But only about 1 in 5 fairs took place as scheduled this summer, while the rest were dramatically modified or outright canceled because of the pandemic, according to data provided by the International Association of Fairs & Expositions.

Fairs are the economic lifeblood and cultural high point of the year for many rural communities, so the decision to cancel one is especially consequential. Scaling back can have devastating effects on the finances of the fair organizers and local community. And organizers fear that skipping a single year could mean losing a fair permanently.

“With very few exceptions, most fairs get most of their income from one single annual event,” said Marla Calico, president and CEO of the International Association of Fairs & Expositions. “Some fairs are trying to figure out how they will survive after this.”

In pressing on with their events, many organizers cited the fair’s importance to their counties, precisely because of the pandemic — people have been isolated from one another and communities are struggling economically.

One, the Montrose County Fair and Rodeo in Colorado, wanted to give students a chance to show and sell their livestock in person, Montrose County Fairgrounds & Event Center director Emily Sanchez said. Organizers promoted the event on social media with the hashtag #spreadingjoy, which Sanchez said was not intended to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the pandemic.

“What we noticed was a lot of people saying that this was the worst year,” Sanchez said. “We were just giving people a minute to enjoy the small things.”

Montrose and most other fairs that took place scaled back events and made other changes to try to prevent coronavirus transmission. Fairs posted signs encouraging mask use and social distancing, and some canceled concerts and carnival-type attractions. The Fresno County fair in California, which is scheduled for October and typically draws 600,000 people, has been rebranded as a “.”

Often, those precautions haven’t worked, though, as fairgoers shed masks and gathered in large groups to watch rodeos and other attractions.

Health officials have since traced some COVID outbreaks to fairs. For example, Ohio Gov. to county fairs after at least 22 cases of COVID-19 were traced back to the Pickaway County Fair in June.

Another fair linked to a COVID outbreak is the Phillips County Fair in the vast plains of northeastern Montana. The organizers of the event in Dodson, a small farming community about 40 miles south of the Canadian border, have long proclaimed that theirs was the longest continuously running fair in the state.

Until the fair took place in early August, Phillips County had another unique distinction: It was one of just a handful of Montana’s 56 counties to have no confirmed cases of COVID-19.

By mid-August, an outbreak of COVID-19 occurred — 68 cases within a week in the county of 4,000 people. The county’s small public health team scrambled to perform contact tracing. They concluded the fair and other events held at the same time, including a softball tournament and a large wedding, caused the spread.

“It was really just a perfect storm that led to an outbreak,” said public health nurse Jenny Tollefson.

The number of infections in Phillips County eventually rose to 114, but county officials have since curbed the outbreak. There were no active cases in the county as of mid-September, according to state health officials.

Sue Olsen, chairperson of the Phillips County Fair board, said organizers did everything they could to safely hold a large community event amid a global pandemic. They purchased 500 gallons of hand sanitizer and encouraged attendees to wear masks, although she said few did. They also improved cleaning procedures in the bathrooms.

They canceled events in which social distancing would not be possible, such as the carnival games and rides, face painting and a clown show. The county’s Native American neighbors on the Fort Belknap Reservation disagreed with the decision to hold the fair and canceled the .

But organizers felt they needed to hold the fair.

“If you don’t have an event one year, you might just lose it,” Olsen said.

The outbreak opened up the county to criticism. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, called .

Other fair organizers took notice but pressed ahead. Near Montana’s Glacier National Park, Flathead County held the Northwest Montana Rodeo and Fair in mid-August despite 140 local health care professionals writing a letter urging organizers to cancel it. Among the medical community’s chief concerns: Schools were reopening just a week after the fair.

Fair manager Mark Campbell said his team worked closely with local health officials to ensure that the event, , could proceed safely.

“We had a health department that was willing to work with us on a plan when a lot of other counties or states just simply said no to public events,” he said.

Campbell said the fair was different than in past years, with a bigger focus on 4-H and agricultural education. They canceled the carnival and parade, plus ditched the beer garden during the concerts and rodeos. Masks were required to enter the fair and the grandstands, showed many people simply took off their masks once inside.

Interim county health officer Tamalee St. James Robinson said the images of so many maskless people in the grandstands were concerning, and fair organizers should have ensured compliance. Campbell said that the organizers took corrective actions to make sure people did wear masks after the images surfaced but that his staff didn’t have time to constantly remind people.

Two weeks later, contact tracers found .

Back in Twin Falls, Idaho, about 3,500 people — half the usual number — showed up at the fair’s opening on Sept. 2, . Despite the smaller crowd, the carnival games and rides went ahead and so did the rodeo.

Stutzman said she spent some of her time during the rodeo sanitizing the hospitality tent — but not necessarily because of the coronavirus.

“We were all raised with manners and good hygiene and consideration for others in our neck of the woods,” she said. “So everything pretty much goes on as it always has.”

The fair ended on Sept. 7, and it remains to be seen what effect, if any, it will have on Twin Falls County’s COVID-19 cases.

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Times have changed. Owner Erin Bolster no longer receives surprised or puzzled looks when she tells people what she does. Now, her business sponsors community events and was recently nominated as a top marijuana provider by a local newspaper.

“We’ve become a normal part of the community, and it feels good that the community has finally accepted us,” Bolster said.

How far that acceptance goes will be tested when voters in Montana and a handful of other states this fall decide whether to legalize recreational or medical marijuana. Five of the six states with ballot questions lean conservative and are largely rural, and the results may signal how far America’s heartland has come toward accepting the use of a substance that federal law still considers an illegal and dangerous drug.

Since Colorado first allowed recreational use of marijuana in 2014, 10 other states have done the same. Most are coastal, left-leaning states, with exceptions like Nevada, Alaska and Maine. An additional 21 states allow medical marijuana, which must be prescribed by a physician.

This year, marijuana advocates are using the November elections to bypass Republican-led legislatures that have opposed legalization efforts, taking the question straight to voters.

Advocates point to a high number of petition signatures and their own internal polling as indicators that the odds of at least some of the measures passing are good.

One unknown is what role the pandemic will play in the marijuana measures’ fate. Demand for marijuana appears to be rising with people feeling stressed and isolated by COVID-19 lockdown measures, on the implications of COVID policies on drug manufacturing, distribution and use. That increased use could work in advocates’ favor.

Mississippi and Nebraska voters will decide on medical marijuana measures.

South Dakota will be the first state to vote on legalizing both recreational and medical marijuana in the same election.

Montana, Arizona and New Jersey, all medical marijuana states, will consider ballot measures in November to allow recreational sales, a move opponents consider evidence of a slippery slope.

“This is how all these states have gotten recreational marijuana. They start with medical,” said Ed Langton, a member of the Mississippi Board of Health, who opposes his state’s legalization efforts.

If all or most of the ballot questions pass, that will leave only a handful of states that have not legalized marijuana in some way, potentially putting pressure on federal lawmakers to change national policy. For now, growers and sellers can’t use banks or credit cards or export their products.

The Marijuana Policy Project is helping to coordinate the Montana legalization effort. Its deputy director, Matthew Schweich, said the organization does so only when polling suggests at least half of voters would support the measure.

“It’s becoming normalized for people,” Schweich said. “People know that other states are legalizing it and the sky has not fallen.”

An effort to legalize marijuana in rural, conservative states would have been an uphill battle even a few years ago. But several factors have worked toward changing attitudes there, Schweich said.

They include a gradually increasing acceptance in red states of neighbors that have legalized recreational pot — and seeing the tax revenue that legal marijuana brings. But perhaps the biggest catalyst toward normalizing pot use is having an established medical marijuana program, Schweich said.

After 15 years, Montana’s medical cannabis program is firmly rooted and has survived several legislative attempts to restrict it or shut it down. According to the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, were serving , which represents nearly 4% of the state’s population.

A survey conducted by the University of Montana earlier this year found that for recreational use, up from 51% the year before. Six years earlier, a found that 60% of residents were against legalization.

Changing attitudes could also stem from states’ changing demographics. An found that 53% of Montanans 25 and older were born outside the state.

Among them is Brandon Powers, who moved to Montana from Missouri last year. Powers supports legalization and believes its passage will depend largely on who turns out.

“If people like me dominate the polls, then it will pass. But if people like my neighbor who thinks ‘the [marijuana] they have today is just too powerful’ dominate the polls, then it will fail,” he said.

In Mississippi, 20 medical marijuana bills have failed over the years in the Statehouse. This year, 228,000 state residents signed petitions in support of a medical marijuana initiative to allow possession of up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana to treat more than 20 qualifying medical conditions.

In response, lawmakers put a competing measure on the ballot that would restrict marijuana use to terminally ill patients and require them to use only pharmaceutical-grade marijuana products.

Jamie Grantham, spokesperson for Mississippians for Compassionate Care, called the measure an effort by the state to split the vote and derail legalization efforts.

“I’m passionate about this because it’s a plant that God made and it can provide relief for those who are suffering,” said Grantham, who described herself as a conservative Republican. “If this is something that can be used to help relieve someone’s pain, then they should be able to use it.”

But opposition is starting to build. Langton, the Mississippi Board of Health member, is working with Mississippi Horizon, a group fighting legalization. Langton said he opposes the original initiative because he believes it’s “overly broad” and would allow dispensaries within 500 feet of schools and churches. It could also put Mississippi on a path toward legalized recreational use, he said.

He added: “They say that marijuana is a natural plant, but poison ivy is natural, too. Just because something is natural doesn’t mean it is good for you.”

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