I Told You Idaho Would Be The Last State to Legalize Marijuana

I got the fantastic news from Marijuana Moment that a medical marijuana initiative will likely make the November 2023 ballot in my birth state of Idaho. It will be placed alongside a constitutional amendment referred by the legislature to kill that initiative and any future attempts to legalize medical marijuana by initiative.

According to the article’s summation of the Idaho Medical Cannabis Act, passage would establish under Idaho Code:

• Health practitioners would be able to recommend medical cannabis to patients with conditions that include, but are not limited to, cancer, anxiety and acute pain.
• Medical marijuana patients or their designated caregiver could purchase up to 113 grams of smokeable cannabis, or 20 grams of THC extract for vaping, per month.
• The state would be start by issuing three vertically integrated cannabis business licenses, after which point it could license up to six total.
• Marijuana would be reclassified under state law as a Schedule II, rather than Schedule I, controlled substance.
• State and local law enforcement would be barred from assisting in federal drug enforcement activities related to the state-legal cannabis program.
• There would be anti-discrimination protections for those who use or sell marijuana in compliance from state law, preventing adverse actions by employers, landlords and educational institutions.
• It does not appear that there would be any equity-centered reforms, nor would the initiative provide for a home grow option.

The backers of the initiative, the Natural Medicine Alliance of Idaho, claim to have turned in 150,000 signatures to place the measure on the ballot. Idaho law requires two signature thresholds. First, they must have collected valid registered voters’ signatures exceeding six percent of the total voters in the last gubernatorial election, which this cycle turns out to be 70,725. Second, they must clear a similar six-percent threshold on a district-by-district basis in at least 18 of Idaho’s 35 legislative districts. County clerks have until June 30 to certify the signatures.

The measure’s supporters were lucky that those remained the thresholds for placing an initiative before voters. The legislature has been historically hostile to the initiative process generally and marijuana initiatives in particular. Attempts have been made to increase the number of districts required, increase the percentage of voters required, and decrease the time allotted to collect signatures. To thwart my 2022 decriminalization initiative campaign, the legislature even tried passing a bill to ban gathering signatures outside the state, thanks to me setting up a signature drive at the legal marijuana dispensaries just across the border in Ontario, Oregon, where Idahoans buy about $8,000,000 in marijuana products per month.

Voters seem poised to pass the initiative. Polls show about three-quarters of Idaho voters will support the the Idaho Medical Cannabis Act. But alongside the Act will be a referred constitutional amendment, House Joint Resolution 4. If this is passed, it would amend the state constitution such that “only the Idaho State Legislature shall have the authority to legalize marijuana, narcotics, or other psychoactive substances.” It would also “remove the ability for citizens to initiate state statutes that would legalize these substances.”

Those prohibitions would go into effect immediately. As a constitutional amendment, it would supersede any initiative that was passed along with it. Passage of either takes a majority vote, but the one with a higher total doesn’t take precedence—the amendment does. It’s possible that 75% of voters would pass medical marijuana initiative, but if 50.01% pass that anti-medical marijuana amendment, Idaho doesn’t get that medical marijuana this year, or likely ever.

You can bet that the proponents of the anti-marijuana amendment are going to lean heavily into the “narcotics or other psychoactive substances” part of their ban. They’ll characterize the medical marijuana initiative as “the camel’s nose under the tent” that’s going to lead to legal mushrooms and other drugs. They’ll say the initiative backers are just trying to enrich themselves with regulatory capture of the medical marijuana business (the plan allows for only three licenses, that control everything from the seed to the sale, after all). They’ll say now that the federal government has moved marijuana to Schedule III, the legislature can move forward next year with a sensible plan, instead of this reckless, self-dealing plan that’s going to lead to people carrying around and smoking pot with no repercussions.

We’ll see whether Idaho voters can be tricked into voting both for and against medical marijuana at the same time. I am hopeful that Idahoans will finally join the rest of the nation in recognizing at least some strictly controlled legal use of some kind of marijuana for some people under some medical conditions.

Whether they do or not, however, I still get to say:

I Told You So!

As long as I can remember, going back to 2007 when I began making a career in marijuana legalization, I have been telling fellow activists, readers, and listeners that my birth state of Idaho would be the last one of the fifty United States to legalize marijuana. My prediction began from just having been a cannabis consumer in Idaho and knowing the religion, politics, and culture of the state.

Then as my career was in full-swing, there were the acts of the Idaho Legislature and governor that went out of their way to declare to the nation that there was to be no marijuana legalization in the Gem State. There was the resolution by the legislature in 2013 that declared that marijuana shall never be legal for any purpose in the state. There was the governor in 2015 vetoing a bill that the same legislature passed that would have allowed epileptic children to use non-psychoactive CBD oil, because he was worried about “public safety.”

In 2013 for HIGH TIMES Magazine I wrote “The Last States to Legalize Weed,” offering my countdown of the seven I think would be last. Hedging my bet a little, I wrote, “Tie: Idaho/Utah/Wyoming – I’ll admit I’m probably biased by growing up in Idaho, but these three states will probably hold onto marijuana prohibition the longest, even if the federal government legalizes weed.”

By 2016, I was involved with medical marijuana initiative campaigns in Idaho that failed to make the ballot. With more insight into the obstacles to reform in Idaho, I wrote for HIGH TIMES about my return from speaking at the Boise Hempfest. In “The Last State to Legalize Marijuana Will Be,” I joked, “One of the most common things I hear when I’m in one of the prohibition states is, ‘this state is going to be the last one to ever legalize marijuana.’ And I always respond, ‘Wanna bet? I’m from Idaho.'”

In 2018, the federal government passed the U.S. Farm Bill that legalized industrial hemp nationwide. Idaho still lagged behind every other state and didn’t get around to legalizing hemp until 2020. In the interim, Idaho State Police had made in 2019 what they called the state’s largest drug bust when they interdicted 6,700lbs of hemp that was legal under federal law as it was being trucked from where it was legal in Oregon to where it was legal in Colorado.

Now, in 2026, every state but Idaho has some form of medical marijuana, medical CBD, hemp-derived THC, or other way patients can legally access some form of cannabis medicine to treat their ailments. The U.S. Attorney General has signed the paperwork designating cannabis as used in state-legal marijuana programs to be a Schedule III substance—a medicinal drug on par legally with ketamine, steroids, and Tylenol with codeine.

This November, it can finally happen. But unless one of the other forty-nine states recriminalizes all marijuana use, Idaho will be the last state to legalize some form of medical marijuana.