Cotter Border Cannabis Guide: Mountain Home, Arkansas

The Twin Lakes region built this town. Bull Shoals and Norfork reservoirs sit on either side of it, the White River below the dams draws trout anglers year round, and the fishing and retirement economy has given Baxter County one of the oldest median ages in Arkansas. Baxter Regional Medical Center is the largest employer, Arkansas State University runs a two-year campus here, and the square downtown still functions as the commercial heart of a place hours from any city.

That demographic profile shapes the patient base more than anything else. Chronic pain, arthritis, neuropathy and sleep dominate the reasons people here register, and tinctures, capsules and topicals move at rates that would look strange in a college town. Every patient still needs a physician's written certification, a fifty-dollar card from the Department of Health, and an identification check at the counter, with the same fourteen-day ceiling of two and a half ounces applied statewide.

Plant Family Therapeutics operates at 5172 Highway 62 East, on the commercial approach into town from the Norfork side, and it opened in February 2020. It is the only licensed counter in Baxter County and the practical option for Gassville, Cotter, Midway, Norfork, Lakeview, Bull Shoals and Flippin as well. The nearest alternatives are an hour or more away in Mountain View or Clinton, which is why patients across this whole region treat the Highway 62 store as their single source rather than one of several.

Arkansas legalized medical cannabis when voters approved Amendment 98 in November 2016, and the first legal sale in the state happened in Hot Springs on May 10, 2019. Three agencies split the work: the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission, housed inside the Department of Finance and Administration, awards cultivation and dispensary licenses; the Alcoholic Beverage Control Division enforces the rules and registers the agents who work behind the counter; and the Department of Health runs the patient registry and issues the cards.

The retail footprint is capped by the amendment itself at forty dispensary licenses and eight cultivation licenses. The state's own fiscal 2025 report counted thirty-seven licensed dispensaries with thirty-six of them in operation, and the DFA counted thirty-six licensed through June 2026, down from thirty-seven a year earlier, with a Texarkana license still on the books whose location has closed. Patients bought $140.3 million worth of product in the first half of 2026, down 2.6 percent year over year, on an average purchase of $75.14. Active patient cards kept climbing anyway, reaching 119,074 in July 2026.

At the register the bill carries three layers of tax: the general state sales rate of 6.5 percent, a medical marijuana privilege charge of 4 percent, and whatever local rate the city and county set, which usually totals somewhere between 11 and 13 percent. Cards cost $50 through the Department of Health, run up to a year, and require a written certification from an Arkansas-licensed physician.

Two things changed the ground under this program recently. The Eighth Circuit cleared the way for Arkansas to enforce its intoxicating-hemp ban in June 2025, which pulled delta-8 gummies and hemp THC vapes off gas station shelves and pushed those buyers toward licensed dispensaries. Then in December 2025 the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that the General Assembly can amend a voter-approved constitutional amendment, which means the rules governing Amendment 98 can now be rewritten in the Capitol rather than at the ballot box.

Arkansas grows what Arkansas sells. Amendment 98 caps cultivation at eight licensed facilities, so nearly every jar, cart and gummy on a state menu traces back to one of them, and vertically integrated retail is common: The Source in Rogers grows, extracts and cooks under the same roof as its dispensary, and Good Day Farm supplies its own Little Rock, Hensley, Texarkana and Van Buren counters. Ask which cultivator packaged a batch and when it was packaged, because harvest date moves quality more than brand name does in a market this small. Every product sold in a licensed dispensary is tested and labeled; anything sold outside one, including hemp THC gummies, is illegal under Act 629 and Act 934.

Sales dipped 2.6 percent in the first half of 2026 while patient counts rose 7.7 percent, which tells you patients are shopping the same market more carefully rather than leaving it. Discounting is now constant, and the DFA's five biggest sellers through June 2026 sat in Sherwood, Hot Springs, Jonesboro, Conway and Alexander rather than in Northwest Arkansas. The hemp ban taking effect in mid-2025 sent former gas-station delta-8 buyers toward licensed counters. The bigger open question is legal, not commercial: after the December 2025 Supreme Court ruling, the legislature can now amend Amendment 98 directly, so the program's rules on licensing, dosing and access are all in play at the Capitol.