Good afternoon. Today is Tuesday, April 20. Yep, it’s 4/20. The day of the devil’s lettuce.

People in eighteen US states and three territories can legally light up a doobie today. Or any day for that matter.

Not if you’re in Idaho, though.

The Gem State has some of the most staunch anti-marijuana laws in the nation. It’s one of two states where all forms of cannabis are completely illegal, one of three states with no medical marijuana program, and, until last week, was only state where industrial hemp was still illegal.

Idaho does allow for the use and sale of cannabidiol, though it’s under strict rules too. Better known as CBD, the naturally occurring substance is derived directly from the hemp plant and by itself, it is non-psychoactive. CBD has been found to be beneficial for a variety of health issues like anxiety, insomnia, and some of the cruelest forms of childhood epilepsy. For CBD to be legal in Idaho, it must contain 0% THC (the psychoactive component of marijuana) and must be derived directly from one of five specific parts of the hemp plant.

Nearly all of Idaho’s neighbors have legalized marijuana in some capacity. It’s legal recreationally and medically in Oregon, Washington, and Montana. It's legal for medical use in Utah. And Canada is the second country in the world to have nationally legalized marijuana for medical and recreational use.

Wyoming is the exception amongst Idaho’s neighbors, which is not all that surprising. But Idaho has held out from the rest of the nation, despite its neighbors' decisions.

A quick timeline of legalization attempts

Idaho first outlawed marijuana in 1927, as many other US states did around that time.

Idaho would remain steadfast in its stance against cannabis for decades with little movement on marijuana legalization until 2007, when four weed reform initiatives made it on the ballot in Hailey, Idaho. The ballot measure was introduced by Ryan Davidson’s group, Liberty Lobby, which was based in the Treasure Valley at the time. (Yeah, that Ryan Davidson. The Ada County Commissioner who made headlines last month.)

Anyway, residents of Hailey voted in favor of legalizing three of the four initiatives: medical marijuana, industrial hemp, and making enforcement of marijuana laws the lowest police priority. Given the fact pot was very much illegal in Idaho at the time, and one of the then-city council members was a federal employee, it became a bit of a cluster after that.

Ultimately, Hailey officials sued over the initiatives. The initiatives went up for another vote and was once again passed by voters. It was short-lived, though. In 2009, Fifth District Judge Robert Elgee basically butchered all of Hailey's marijuana initiatives into nothing.

From 2009 to 2012 Representative Tom Trail, R-Moscow, would try and fail at several attempts to push hemp and medical marijuana legalization. (Here is a recent op-ed on hemp legalization in Idaho that details Trail’s efforts.)

In 2012, the same year Colorado and Washington legalized recreational pot, a group called Compassionate Idaho attempted an initiative to legalize medical marijuana, but couldn’t get enough signatures to make it on the ballot.

In 2013, the Idaho Legislature passed a resolution declaring its strong opposition to legalizing marijuana in any form. The resolution states that, “drug legalization efforts in other states have led to social, economic and legal chaos, with programs full of fraud and abuse” amongst other things. TL;DR the Idaho legislature said legal pot in Idaho isn’t gonna happen.

Still, that same year, Compassionate Idaho made another attempt to gather signatures to get medical marijuana on the 2014 ballot, but ultimately failed.

The next year, 2014, Oregon legalized recreational marijuana.

In 2015, the Idaho legislature passed a law to allow the use of CBD to treat severe seizure disorders. Governor Otter vetoed the measure. Instead, he issued an Executive Order for an Expanded Access Program (EAP) that allowed a limited number of children with seizure disorders access to pharmaceutical-grade CBD, according to the Idaho Office of Drug Policy. (But also, it was only open to 40 children and families had to foot the bill for traveling to get treatment... so that doesn't seem very helpful.)

That same year, a group called New Approach Idaho started to gather signatures for an initiative that would start a medical marijuana program, decriminalize marijuana, and legalize industrial hemp in Idaho. The group ultimately withdrew its petition citing problems with wording.

In 2016, two dispensaries opened in Huntington, Oregon. The teeny tiny town saw a big ol’ boom almost instantly given the fact that at the time, it was the only place people living in Eastern Oregon could go to buy legal weed. Idahoans were headed there too, of course. According to an Oregon Public Broadcasting story from 2016, an owner of 420Ville, one of the two dispensaries, said many of his 200 daily customers were driving over from Idaho.

In the fall of 2016, Idaho Medical Marijuana Association filed a petition saying it would gather signatures to try once again to get a legalization initiative onto the 2018 ballot. But the group’s leader had to halt her work to care for her ailing son. A few months later Nevada legalized recreational pot, leaving Idaho bordered on two sides by states with fully legal weed.

In 2018, Utah passed legislation to allow for medical marijuana. And in 2020, Montana voters decided in favor of recreational marijuana.

Now here we are in 2021

And despite the fact that we’re basically bordered on all sides by states with legal reefer, the Idaho legislature seems hell bent on making sure Idaho never ever has legal cannabis. There have been multiple marijuana-related proposals during the 2021 legislative session, but some are just to make sure the chances of pot being legalized are slim to none.

Industrial Hemp

​HB 126 is the industrial hemp production bill. Last week, Idaho became the 50th state to legalize industrial hemp. The legislature gave the final thumbs up to the bill in March and the Idaho Press reported Governor Little signed the bill into law late last week. Hemp is now legal for cultivation by Idaho farmers, and it's legal to transport and process the plant, too.

Medical Marijuana

​HB 108 is a bipartisan bill to legalize medical marijuana. The House Health and Welfare Committee introduced the bill that would legalize and strictly regulate medical marijuana throughout Idaho. The proposal would allow Idahoans age 21 years or older who have one of 16 qualifying medical conditions (like cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and certain terminal diseases) to be prescribed specific dosages and concentrations of marijuana by their doctor.

Patients would have to get their medical Mary J from specific pharmacies and would be limited in how much they could obtain per month and how much THC those dosages could contain.

The bill is dubbed the Sergeant Kitzhaber Medical Cannabis Act. It is named after Jeremy Kitzhaber (in the video below), a retired senior master sergeant of the U.S. Air Force with Stage 4 terminal cancer. The Idaho Statesman reported that Sergeant Kitzhaber showed up to the Idaho legislature committee meeting “with a draft bill and a bag of pills. He demonstrated to state legislators the medication he needed on a daily basis to keep him alive — hydrocodone, oxycodone, pills to help with the bowel obstruction caused by the opioids, and a cancer inhibitor drug, to name a few.”

The Sergeant Kitzhaber Medical Cannabis Act still needs a full hearing before it can go to the House. Who knows if that will get anywhere this year, but we will see.

Constitutional Amendment

​HJR4 is the anti-drug constitutional amendment that basically would have banned any drug that is currently illegal in Idaho ever from being legalized. In early February, the amendment barely passed the Idaho Senate with a 24-11 vote (exactly the two-thirds needed) and went to the House. A month later, Senator Grow introduced a new version of the proposal to the House State Affairs Committee. Just last week, the Idaho Press reported that the proposal was nixed by the House in a 42-28 vote.

Ballot Initiatives

​SB 1110 was signed into law on Saturday and is basically a death sentence for any Idaho group attempting to get an initiative on the ballot. The law requires signatures of 6% of registered voters in all 35 of Idaho’s legislative districts in order to qualify any initiative to be on the ballot. The former law required 6% from 18 of the 35 districts. Despite the fact that the bill was widely disputed, the legislature and Governor went ahead and did it anyway. Sigh. As the timeline above suggests, groups have already had trouble gathering signatures to get initiatives on the ballot, so you can imagine how this would make it that much harder. It takes time, money, and resources to travel the state collecting signatures and I can't help but think those in power knew exactly what this would mean for groups working on things like medical marijuana. It's probably going to court though, so another wait and see.

Signature-Gathering

​SB1150 is a bill meant to prevent groups working on medical marijuana initiatives in Idaho from collecting signatures in the parking lots of dispensaries in Ontario, Oregon. Yesterday, this bill ran into trouble in the House, as reported by the Idaho Press. The bill states that people have to be physically present in Idaho to sign, which would prevent deployed military from taking part and sparked debate amongst the committee, leaving it to be sent back for amendments.

Money talks

Speaking of Ontario, get this: cannabis sales in the little town of Ontario, Oregon totaled $91.7 million in 2020, according to the Portland Business Journal.

That’s $7.6 million a month, $1.7 million a week, or $251,233 a day.

Ontario is the only city in Malheur County that legally sells weed and it led Oregon in county-by-county sales. Which means that little ol’ Ontario, Oregon generated more money from marijuana sales than anywhere else in Oregon. More than Multnomah County, which includes Portland and all the other cities comprised in its metropolis.

Do you really think the 11,000 residents of Ontario were responsible for that?

Ontario is less than an hour from the Treasure Valley, which is home to about 40 percent of Idaho’s population. It’s pretty obvious that Idahoans are making frequent trips to pick up in Ontario, and have been for the last few years.

In early 2020, Green Entrepreneur reported that “per-person sales of recreational marijuana at Oregon dispensaries near the Idaho border are 420 percent higher than sales in the rest of the state, according to a report by Josh Lehner of the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis.” What’s more, the report found that 75 percent of those sales are attributed to people crossing the Idaho-Oregon border. (Also, yes the 420% is a serious statistic lol amazing.)

A Politico story that came out a few days ago cited that, “Ontario’s nine dispensaries sold an eye-popping $2,857 of cannabis per county resident in 2020. In Multnomah County — the state’s most populous county, which encompasses much of Portland, a marijuana powerhouse — the cannabis industry sold only $378 per resident last year.”

Those numbers speak for themselves. And not just for the dispensaries slinging doobies and the farmers supplying flower.

In 2020, the city of Ontario took in $1.5 million in tax revenue from pot sales, and is expecting close to $3 million in 2021, which amounts to about 9 percent of the city’s $35 million annual budget, according to Politico.

Idaho could be bringing in $33,295,445 in tax revenue, as estimated by the Tax Foundation. How would that divvy up across the state? It depends. All states divvy differently.

In Alaska, 25% goes to the general fund, 50% to the Department of Public Safety, Health and Social Services, and Department of Corrections, and 25% to the Marijuana Education Fund.

In Colorado, 10% goes to local governments and 90% goes to the state government, which is then divided up at 15.56% of the state revenue goes to the general fund, 12.59% goes to the state public school fund, and 71.85% goes to the marijuana tax cash fund.

In Oregon, 40% goes to the state school fund, 20% to mental health, alcoholism, and drug services, 15% to the Oregon state police, 5% to the Oregon Health Authority for drug treatment and prevention, and 20% to cities and counties.

So, Idaho...

How long are we going to do this for?

How many years will we make fear-based decisions? How long are we going to keep pointing the finger at pot as the big bad wolf, while opioids and alcohol kill people and ruin lives in Idaho every single day? Are we going to continue to turn a blind eye at the thousands of people driving across state lines, risking drug trafficking charges while pretending like the potential revenue wouldn’t benefit Idaho?

Or will we wake up and realize that the people of Idaho are already using cannabis and the sky hasn’t fallen yet? Will we see the potential for more jobs, additional agricultural opportunity, and lean in to existing consumer demand?

Are we ever going to admit that marijuana isn’t the monster that so many people in Idaho have made it out to be?

Because it’d be a lot cooler if we did.

With love from Oregon's pot capitol,

-Marissa
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Send your thoughts, ideas, and anti-pot gripes to marissa@fromboise.com