Idaho voters will decide next month who has the right to determine whether psychoactive drugs should be legal.
House Joint Resolution 4 seeks to change the state constitution and put that decision exclusively in the hands of the legislature.
Lawmakers approved H.J.R. 4 more than a year and a half ago. It is finally making its way to the ballot.
“It’s time for Idahoans to proactively decide the state’s fate relative to marijuana, psychoactive substances and narcotics,” said the bill’s prime sponsor, Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, during a March 2025 debate on the House floor.
By “Idahoans,” he meant the legislators who are directly elected by the people.
“I want to be upfront,” Skaug said. “That takes it out of the initiative process for people to run an initiative to legalize drugs. It puts it in the power of the elected people to legalize. That’s not for making something illegal, but to legalize what’s currently illegal.”
The resolution passed the House by a 58-10 vote. The Senate approved it 29-6.
That would seem to put an end to occasional attempts to use the ballot to legalize medical marijuana, said Rep. Ilana Rubel, D-Boise.
“Really, all that this does is it’s stripping the power of the people, should the people of Idaho ever reach that level where they are so desperate to get medical cannabis legalized that they are willing to leap through the astonishing hurdles that have already been set in their path for a ballot initiative,” she said.
Skaug says the resolution refers not just to medical marijuana, but dozens of other substances that are now illegal in Idaho.
“We’ve regulated liquors since 1934,” Skaug said during the 2005 floor debate. “We’re just updating to also take care of the drug issues,” such as fentanyl.
He pointed to drug legalization efforts in Washington and Oregon that he believes have failed.
“You know the damage that was done in the big city of Portland and over in Oregon,” Skaug said. “I pick on them a lot because I travel there and see what’s happened to that once wonderful state.”
Luke Mayville from Reclaim Idaho believes the resolution is not about drugs, but power. Reclaim Idaho sponsored the successful 2018 Medicaid expansion initiative.
“H.J.R. 4 is clearly part of a decades-long series of attacks on citizen initiative rights,” Mayville said. “A couple years ago, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that those attacks were mostly unconstitutional, and that's why they're now trying to change the Constitution itself.”
Mayville said that if the measure passes, it could be a springboard to future restrictions on citizen ballot measures.
He’s been traveling the state to spread his message, with stops last week in Coeur d’Alene and Moscow.
“We're hearing from people who say they would probably vote no on any marijuana initiative, but they're still going to vote no on H.J.R. 4 because they want to defend their right to have a voice in the process,” he said.
H.J.R. 4 is one of four statewide ballot measures in Idaho this election.
Proposition 1 seeks to reinstate some abortion and reproductive health care rights. H.J.R. 6 would enshrine in the state Constitution that English is the official language of Idaho. The fourth measure is non-binding. It asks voters to choose the official state firearm from a list of six choices.
