FEATURE |
ERIN BOLSTER connecting community through cannabis BY MOLLY THORVILSON
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ears begin to well up in Erin Bolster’s eyes as she recalls an emotional experience, one that has now become nearly an everyday encounter. She takes a deep breath and says, “She called me crying the next day.” Erin pauses. Tears begin to lightly stream down her cheeks. She swallows and continues, her voice beginning to soften, “She said, ‘I just had the first full night of sleep in a long, long time, and I used to put people in jail for this.’” Erin says the woman on the other end of the line was sobbing with competing senses of relief and guilt. She was a retired police officer that became desperate for pain control while fighting breast cancer. Against cannabis, but as a last resort for relief, she turned to Erin’s business, Tamarack Cannabis, to help ease the pain. “She never tried it until she was desperate and now knows it’s a safe medicine, and its recreational effects are pleasant and mild. It totally changed her perspective.” Erin has heard this story and others like it many times, but each time tales of skeptics-turned-supporters and healing “miracles” still tug on her emotions. “I know there are a lot of good people out there
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and they work against cannabis because they don’t know. They just don’t know. Sometimes it takes a personal experience for them— something that happens to their spouse, their child, and they end up finding out that it’s safe and they were wrong, and they change their minds.”
CURRENT CANNABIS CLIMATE It seems in Montana, though, there aren’t a whole lot of minds left to change. At least not according to the voting public. In a year full of division, Montana voters, no matter what side of the political spectrum, largely agreed on only one issue: cannabis. They spoke loud and clear on their November 2020 ballots, telling lawmakers to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Constitutional initiatives 118 and 190 were passed by 58 and 57 percent, effectively legalizing, regulating, and taxing marijuana in Montana for adults 21 and older. That’s roughly the same percentage of Montana voters that chose to support former President Donald Trump on
