Idaho activists continue to campaign for medicinal cannabis to be used in the 2024 vote

An advocacy group is determined to bring medicinal cannabis to Idaho, one of the last states without legal weed.

The group is called Kind Idaho and their supporters are currently collecting signatures to get the proposal for next year’s vote.

Joe Evans, the group’s treasurer, said the goal was simply “to legalize medicinal cannabis for cardholders in the state of Idaho.”

“This gives them an opportunity to sit down with a doctor and determine whether or not the diagnosis warrants medicinal cannabis to aid in recovery and healing. And then they get the card. And that allows them to go to a pharmacy to get it,” Evans told local news station KTVB.

Here’s more from the broadcaster about what the group is following:

“Kind Idaho is working to collect signatures for his petitions. They have until April 14 next year to collect about 63,000 signatures from registered voters to take part in the voting. It’s a tall order to accomplish considering Idaho is one of five states that have no legal cannabis at all.”

The group began efforts last year to participate in the 2024 vote, the latest in a decade of failed efforts to legalize medical cannabis treatment in Idaho. In 2012, activists failed to gather enough signatures for their medicinal cannabis proposal to qualify for the vote. Two years later it happened again and a signature campaign failed. The medicinal cannabis campaigns in 2015 and 2016 both collapsed over voting formalities.

Evans and company hope this time will be different – and the public may be on their side. A poll last year found that 68% of Idaho adults think medicinal cannabis should be legalized.

Evans and other supporters of the proposal stress that the initiative would not legalize recreational marijuana use.

“We’re also not really looking for full decriminalization or giving people medication, medicinal cannabis for headaches,” Evans told KTVB.

However, Idaho is surrounded by states that have legalized adult recreational marijuana use: Washington and Oregon to the west; Nevada to the south; and Montana to the east. Wyoming and Utah are the only two states bordering Idaho that haven’t lifted cannabis bans.

This clash of geography and federalism has prompted many Idaho residents to cross the border to obtain legal weed.

Cannabis companies in Ontario, Oregon — about an hour from Idaho’s capital, Boise — have been serving scores of customers from every state.

“Politicians managed to create this scenario where they say they don’t have legal cannabis,” Steve Meland, owner of Ontario’s Hotbox Farms, told NPR earlier this year. “But actually we all know that there is legal cannabis in Boise.”

“There [are] “Over a million people within a hundred miles of the store,” added Meland. “Of course they serve a broader market.”

NPR reported that Meland’s company is “a key player in an economic recovery that has taken place since pot shops were legalized in Ontario in 2018.”

“There are now twelve pharmacies in this small farming town, which were once best known for inventing the Tater Tot. Ontario now sells more weed per capita than anywhere else in Oregon. The industry employs around 600 people. Many buy health insurance, and most — like their customers — seem to commute here from Idaho,” the outlet said.

According to NPR, this boom has “quickly become the latest flashpoint in a larger political and cultural struggle that has been heating up since 2020, when a group of Oregonians from the state’s rural east first began circulating petitions about a secession proposal.” largely blue state and join conservative Idaho.”