BETHEL — The small mountain town doesn’t immediately present itself as one of Maine’s most vibrant cannabis markets.

The plant’s pungent scent doesn’t linger in the air. The town center is dotted with restaurants, boutiques and inns, not pot shops.

But as you reach the outskirts of Bethel, closer to the ski resort or the New Hampshire border, they start popping up, dotting the shoulders of the highway as you roll by with bright green signs advertising pre-rolls, edibles and other THC-infused goods.

The community of 2,500 people located deep in the White Mountains has about one dispensary, grow or manufacturing facility for every 200 residents, according to state data. It’s the highest concentration of cannabis businesses of any municipality in the state with more than 1,500 residents.

Since Maine legalized medical cannabis in 1999 and recreational weed in 2016, the state’s marijuana industry has blossomed. Maine sold more than half a billion dollars’ worth of cannabis last year between both markets.

The industry has had an outsize impact on the state’s rural communities. Battered in recent decades by shrinking populations and fleeing industries, a lot of small towns, including many on the border, have now embraced cannabis as an economic driver.

Dispensaries in Oxford, York and Cumberland counties average higher sales per customer than shops elsewhere in the state, according to the Maine Office of Cannabis Policy data. Six of the 10 Maine municipalities with more than 1,500 residents and the highest concentration of cannabis businesses are located within 20 miles of the border with New Hampshire.

To the locals, it’s not the number of shops that’s surprising. It’s the fact that they can all stay in business.

“I think the bubble’s gonna burst,” said Michael Bryer, who’s lived in the area for decades and patronized Bethel’s various dispensaries for years. “There’s just so many of them.”

A GROWING MARKET

If Bethel is the cannabis capital of Maine, Mike Everett might be its mayor.

If you’ve ever driven through town on the way to Sunday River Resort, you’ve almost certainly passed The Stoned Moose. You might have considered stopping for a photo. It’s the most conspicuous dispensary in town.

“Between the giant moose, the old gondolas and all the signs, you can’t miss us,” grinned Everett, the shop’s founder.

Bethel’s cannabis market may never have grown as large as it is without Everett’s work. For years, he lobbied local officials to allow dispensaries in town.

When The Stoned Moose was first set up as a small medical grow in 2016, it was the culmination of Everett’s lifelong passion. He was brought up in western Maine and has been growing cannabis for most of his life. He jokes about the weed he and his buddies grew in the woods behind their houses back in the ’70s, long before the plant was legal.

“That stuff was like dirt compared to what we grow now,” he laughed.

For decades before legalization, state and local authorities routinely uncovered small-scale growing operations inside homes and backyards. Most of the dozen or so Bethel locals interviewed by the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram over the last week said cannabis has long been a part of the culture in western Maine, and it doesn’t bother them.

It’s long been common for locals to toke up before hitting the slopes at Sunday River, said John Williamson, who’s lived in the area for some 30 years and volunteered at the resort most of those winters.

“I mean, it’s a free country,” he said. “I’m not against it.”

But despite that seemingly baked-in culture, when Maine voters allowed municipalities to opt in to legal recreational cannabis, Bethel took years to get on board.

The issue was debated extensively in committee meetings and at public hearings. Town officials adopted and repeatedly extended a moratorium on medical cannabis storefronts. Everett, who was eager to transition his longstanding black market growing operation into the newly legal industry, pushed officials for years to change their tune.

“I sat in at every meeting, every Wednesday, whether it was the ordinance committee or the select board meetings,” he recalled. “And sometimes it got heated.”

Much of the discussion was centered on how far away dispensaries should be from schools. Town officials debated whether ordinances should be adopted by ballot or in a special town meeting and whether embracing legal weed would ultimately change Bethel’s character. But eventually, voters legalized medical dispensaries in 2019.

Soon after, Everett expanded his facility and moved it to its current location, just down the road from Sunday River Resort.

Now with a medical dispensary, recreational storefront, large-scale grow and product manufacturing all on site, The Stoned Moose has grown into Bethel’s largest cannabis operation. It rakes in millions of dollars a year, Everett said, and business isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.

But while the store has its local regulars, they aren’t the ones paying Everett’s bills. It’s those “from away,” he said, who keep his and other businesses afloat.

THE NEW HAMPSHIRE CONNECTION

Perhaps the most obvious reason why Bethel has become a hub for cannabis businesses is its geography.

The town is located just 10 miles from Maine’s border with New Hampshire, where recreational weed is still illegal, and five from some of Maine’s most popular ski slopes. And while state data shows Maine cannabis sales tend to lag in the winters, Bethel’s status as a year-round tourist destination keeps its weed economy bustling 12 months a year.

While many Mainers drive to New Hampshire for their tax-free liquor, data from the state cannabis office has found New Hampshirites are returning the favor with weed.

Most of those in Bethel’s cannabis businesses said out-of-staters make up the majority of their sales. Across the border, in the New Hampshire town of Gorham, residents weren’t surprised.

Many there who spoke with a reporter said the state’s prohibition on recreational cannabis hasn’t stopped them from smoking. Some said they go to stock up on flower once a week. Others said they use CBD tinctures for pain relief. Even if they didn’t smoke, everyone in town seemed to know someone who did.

“I’ve got some friends who you’d never expect to be doing that stuff. But now they go over to Maine all the time,” laughed Scott Welsh, who helps run The Wandering Soul Antiques with his wife in downtown Gorham.

“It’s kind of funny,” he added from behind the front counter of the crowded store. “That in the ‘Live Free or Die’ state, you’ve still gotta go over the border for that.”

In Maine, any resident over 18 can obtain a medical card by stopping into a medicinal dispensary, paying a small fee and setting up a telehealth appointment. And while recreational cannabis is illegal in New Hampshire, medical cannabis isn’t. Maine and New Hampshire have an agreement allowing dispensaries to recognize each other’s med cards.

“They’re probably about 80% of our business,” Nicole Lluellas, a budtender at The New Mill in Bethel, said of her store’s New Hampshire customers.

The New Mill is one of several dispensaries located on Route 2, just miles from the border. Unlike most others in town, the shop is strictly medical — meaning all customers must have a medical card to buy anything.

At Brilliant Buds, just down the road, a budtender who asked not to be named estimated that roughly three quarters of the IDs he checks on a given day are from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and other New England states.

TOURIST SEASON

While it’s the New Hampshirites who laid the foundation for Bethel’s cannabis market, many in the industry said it’s tourists who have kept it growing.

Many in Bethel’s weed business said the slowest time of year tends to be right now: Mud season. It’s the one time of year when there isn’t a reason for tourists to drive into town en masse.

Everett, at The Stoned Moose, said he does the most business in the fall. The leaf peepers, he said, often buy a couple of pre-rolls before taking a hike through the orange and yellow painted leaves that blanket the rolling hills of the Mahoosuc Range.

“And they come from all over,” Everett said. “New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Germany, Japan — you name it.”

In the winter, skiers from around the world flock to the nearby slopes at Sunday River. The summers bring hikers and mountain bikers to trek through the northern reaches of the Appalachian Mountains.

“Believe it or not, we get a lot of Appalachian Trail hikers in the shop,” said Lluellas. Bethel is only about 10 miles away from where the trail crosses into Maine.

While cannabis is booming in Bethel right now, not everyone is sure it will last.

Business has been buoyed by what Sharon Jackson, the town manager, described as lax municipal statutes. There are no added taxes on cannabis shops, sales or grows, she said, nor is there a cap on how many businesses can be in town.

The low barriers to entry have made some in Bethel’s weed industry worry about overcrowding. Having too many dispensaries so close together may be suffocating the town’s market, they fear. Shopkeepers in all industries, including cannabis, are concerned that declines in tourism because of tariffs and inflation could affect their bottom lines.

“I’m surprised they’ve all stayed,” said Nicole Pellerin, a local who co-owns the Gemini Cafe in downtown Bethel. “I don’t know how they all stay in business.”

Maine’s cannabis markets have also shown signs of stagnation. The state’s medical market became one of — if not the — strongest in the country, consistently earning more in revenue than its recreational counterpart. But that gap has narrowed over the last five years as Maine has shed thousands of medical cannabis growers in what state regulators have described as a “mass exodus” from the industry.

“We were half medical, half rec. Now we don’t grow medical here anymore,” said Everett, at The Stoned Moose. “You can buy it so cheap anywhere else. It’s just not worth it for the little guy.”

Some have said the trend is fueled by creeping state regulations and tax hikes. Others have said an influx of gray market grows run by alleged organized crime groups is cratering market rates.

But many say the real threat to Maine cannabis is a looming corporate consolidation.

Brilliant Buds, the dispensary closest to Bethel’s border with New Hampshire, was purchased this year by Curaleaf, a $1.8 billion corporation that grows cannabis and manages storefronts in 15 states and more than a dozen countries.

Ryan Colwell, Curaleaf’s northeastern retail director, said the company only purchased Brilliant Buds’ storefront, not their growing operation, and still carries the same selection of local products as before the sale. Curaleaf, Colwell added, “isn’t trying to push people in smaller businesses out.”

While the multinational corporation’s presence in Bethel stands in contrast to the local growers who have built the market into one of Maine’s strongest, Curaleaf ultimately set up shop for the same reason everyone else did: Bethel’s location.

It’s a community whose identity is based on being a stop along the way to the mountains, where many residents live seasonally and tourism is a major economic driver. It’s somewhat fitting that Bethel’s dispensaries have adopted a similar mentality.

“Bethel is right next to the border. And our shop is right next to the mountains,” Everett said. “You can’t beat that.”