Cannabis Sellers Warn Against Taking Marijuana Into Yellowstone

Lone Peak Cannabis Co. sits just outside the west entrance to Yellowstone National Park.

Business picks up at the recreational marijuana dispensary this time of year, and with the seasonal spike in first-time customers comes a slew of questions about how best to consume marijuana inside the park. 

Those kinds of questions put Kevin Cannon, a manager at West Yellowstone’s Lone Peak Cannabis Co., in a tough spot.

He strives to prevent situations where customers might later tell law enforcement inside Yellowstone, “But the guys at the pot shop said …”

“Just don’t take it in the park,” said Cannon. “It's federal and it's a far more extreme charge than it would be if you got caught anywhere else with it in the state.”

Cannon’s dispensary sits on U.S. Highway 191 along a 10-mile swath of Montana. It’s a thin strip of territory where recreational marijuana use is legal that’s flanked by Idaho to the west and Wyoming to the east, where pot remains illegal. 

Trying to get their bearings and looking for advice about how to best tour around Yellowstone while consuming marijuana, Cannon’s customers ask the same question: Should we go through the park and into Wyoming, or is it better to travel out through Idaho? 

“We get that question on a constant basis,” said Cannon.

Cannon provides customers with a basic introduction to navigating the legal landscape of pot in and around Yellowstone. 

Starting July 1, the minimum fine for anyone convicted of simple marijuana possession in Idaho is $300 for possession of less than 3 ounces.

Fines are higher if charged with possession in Yellowstone, and there’s the potential for jail time. 

Cannon’s recommendation is to stock up at his dispensary, then explore the perimeter of the park in Montana, where it’s legal. 

“There’s twice as many trails outside the park,” said Cannon, suggesting places like Quake Lake and hikes up the Lionhead Trail. 

One warning: Visitors to Yellowstone pass through a 1.5-mile swath of Montana before crossing into Wyoming via the west entrance. Even though this narrow margin of Yellowstone Park sits in Montana, federal law rules, making it one of the few places in Montana where pot remains illegal. 

Yellow Stoned

The enforcement of federal law inside national parks creates a patchwork of legal vs. illegal zones at parks across the U.S. 

“You can't walk around Gettysburg Battlefield with a metal detector, even though it's perfectly fine to walk around downtown Gettysburg with a metal detector,” noted Greg Jackson, a former deputy chief for the U.S. Park Service’s Division of Law Enforcement, Security and Emergency Services in Washington, D.C.

He doesn’t advocate for cannabis use in Yellowstone, but if one wanted to elevate their experience by bringing marijuana into the park, then be discreet, said Jackson. Also, don’t smoke and drive and don’t make yourself look like a drug dealer by stashing your weed in a door panel.

Also, if you encounter a large gathering of smokers, beware: The rangers could be watching. 

“If you ask the rangers in any given park, they would know the usual places,” said Jackson, who figured the best place to store marijuana while driving through Yellowstone is in your toiletries bag. 

“Then it’s like, ‘Yeah, I use it all the time for my migraines,’” said Jackson. 

It never hurts to stop at the visitor centers and ask “for a friend,” “hypothetically speaking,” about the dos and don’ts of pot smoking in Yellowstone. 

At all national park visitor centers, said Jackson, those on duty keep, “A little logbook under the counter when someone comes in to ask a ridiculous question that goes into the logbook.”

Like when Jackson was working at Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park in the middle of a blizzard with three-foot drifts outside and a guy walked in and wanted to know, “Where can I buy some ice?”

In and around Yellowstone, if someone were to ask, “Will the wildlife try to eat my marijuana?”, the answer is “maybe.” 

Cannon at Lone Peak Cannabis Company said growers in nearby Ennis and Big Sky, Montana, have run into trouble with mountain goats. 

In Big Sky, a grower caught the goats in the act. 

“They had already ate his plants, but you know it hadn't worked through their digestive system,” said Canon. “But the other one that I heard about over in Ennis, that one of the goats was asleep in the greenhouse when they got home.”

Busted In Yellowstone

If one were to encounter law enforcement in Yellowstone National Park, what’s the worst-case scenario? 

Pot case precedents run the gamut from wrist slapping to real jail time. 

A timeline of criminal charges filed in Yellowstone, compiled by parks officials, recounts an undercover sting by Old Faithful rangers in 1991 that culminated in the arrests of three teenagers, including one who fled the park and was later arrested in Las Vegas. 

“An undercover officer posing as a concession employee was able to purchase marijuana, LSD and mushrooms from the three men,” according to the park. 

In Canyon Village in 1997, a marijuana bust seized 55 grams of pot, $305 in cash and “eight grams of a drug called ‘monkey's blood.’”

When about 60 grams of marijuana was seized in 2003, the person charged was sentenced to 90 days in jail, with an additional 90 days custody suspended. There was also a $1,000 fine and two years of probation.

A woman brought nearly 300 pounds of marijuana into the park in the back of an RV. That earned her a five-year jail sentence, plus she had to forfeit the RV and the $3,500 in cash found inside. 

Rangers also were surprised by what they found inside a Chevy Tahoe in 2020. In addition to seven pounds of marijuana, they discovered a stash of giant pinecones, possibly stolen from national parks in California.

David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.