Politics
Idaho Medical Marijuana Campaign Reacts To State Official’s Claims About Its Unsuccessful Push To Get On Ballot
A campaign that tried unsuccessfully to get a medical cannabis legalization initiative on Idaho’s ballot this year is pushing back against a top state official’s claims about its petitioning drive.
Secretary of State Phil McGrane (R) said earlier this month that his office received “received numerous complaints concerning the petition process” for the marijuana initiative—adding that “even under the most favorable assumption” that every petition sheet turned in was timely filed and that every submitted signature was valid, activists still wouldn’t have met minimum requirements. He also said that possible illegal petitioning conduct has been referred to the State Police for “review and potential criminal investigation.”
Now, in a letter to McGrane, a lawyer for the Natural Medical Alliance of Idaho (NMAI) says that the campaign “does not agree with several issues” the secretary of state raised—although he made clear that advocates won’t be pursuing a legal challenge to the decision to keep the measure off the November ballot.
To be certified for the ballot, the team needed to submit signatures from at least 6 percent of registered voters as of the state’s last general election, which currently amounts to 70,725. They also needed to meet that 6 percent threshold in at least 18 of the state’s 35 legislative districts. But the secretary of state said they only turned in 58,024 county-certified signatures and met the local threshold in only 13 districts.
The new letter on behalf of NMAI, signed by Jeremy C. Chou of Givens Pursley LLP, said that there was an “unusually high rejection rate” for the cannabis campaign’s petitions.
“It appears that well over 10,000 signatures from registered Idaho voters were rejected based on technicalities or legally questionable grounds,” he said.
For example, Chou wrote that the decision to reject signatures due to voters from different counties signing a single petition sheet “may have served a purpose when clerks had access only to county records, Idaho now maintains a statewide voter-registration database.”
He also said the rejection of signatures because they were undated is “especially concerning because the governing statutes do not expressly require each signer to provide a date.”
The NMAI attorney additionally questioned the decision not to accept signatures from voters deemed to be not “active,” writing that “the initiative statutes do not impose a specific registration timeline.”
The letter from Chou also notes state officials’ concerns about circulator residency and petition warning requirements, saying that the campaign relied on a contractor to handle much of the signature gathering effort.
“If the contractor inadequately documented residency or used an incorrect form, NMAI nevertheless acted in good faith to comply with Idaho law,” the letter, which was first reported by KTVB-TV, says.
Regarding the secretary of state’s flagging potentially fraudulent petitioning activity—including the submission of a signature purporting to be from a person who died in 2021—Chou said the campaign “has zero tolerance for fraud and stands ready to cooperate with any fraud-related investigation” and arguing that “a small number of questionable signatures do not undermine the integrity of the broader signature-gathering effort.”
Finally, regarding potential campaign finance reporting deficiencies related to disclosures for paid signature gatherers, Chou again put the blame on the petitioning contractor firm.
“To the extent the concerns involve reporting of payments to petition circulators, NMAI engaged a professional contractor to manage circulator payments; that contractor held all payment data and was required by law to accurately report that information,” he wrote. “In any event, reporting deficiencies of this kind do not provide a basis for rejecting otherwise valid signatures.”
Meanwhile, Black Peak, the petitioning contractor that NMAI first used before switching to a different one, responded to the campaign’s criticism, saying it “stands behind the work we did to help bring medical cannabis access to Idaho voters.”
“Our petition circulators operated under clear rules and clear expectations. We collected identification from every circulator we hired, and we confirmed each circulator’s Idaho residency on three separate occasions during the application and onboarding process,” it told KTVB. “Every signature we collected was then subjected to a rigorous validation process, including a forensic handwriting review, before it was submitted.”
“As for the Natural Medicine Alliance of Idaho’s claim that our operation was disorganized, the record tells a different story. Black Peak did the job we were hired to do. The Alliance owes Black Peak a substantial sum for services rendered and has chosen to attack our work rather than pay its bills. Criticizing a vendor you have not paid is not accountability. It is deflection, and Idaho voters deserve better from a group asking for their trust. The problems on this campaign did not begin in the field, and they did not end there. Black Peak remains prepared to resolve any outstanding matters professionally, and we wish the effort to expand patient access in Idaho every success.”
While the cannabis campaign submitted more than 150,000 total signatures in May, there were some recent indications that there could be an issue meeting the county-level requirement as well as potentially the statewide total.
A judge ruled last month that signatures in Minidoka County were turned in too late to be counted. Separately, some petitions for the medical cannabis measure throughout the state were at risk of being thrown out due to the possibility they may have been collected by out-of-state circulators.
Meanwhile, voters in November will see a different kind of cannabis proposal on the ballot: A constitutional amendment that the legislature approved to make it so only lawmakers could legalize marijuana or other controlled substances—preventing the reform from being enacted by voters via a future ballot initiative.
While NMAI pursued ballot access for the legalization measure, Idaho lawmakers have also pushed back in other ways. Both the Senate and House of Representatives passed a resolution this session urging voters to “reject” the medical marijuana petition.
The measure, sponsored by the Senate State Affairs Committee, claims that cannabis legalization in other states has led to a host of harms, including “increased cartel activity, development of black market marijuana production, human trafficking, and increased crime rates” as well as “increased rates of serious health issues,” environmental harms and “safety concerns on job sites.”
It argues that the marijuana initiative would not only increase costs to the state but that its list of approved medical conditions is “so broad that almost anyone could qualify.”
“The Idaho Medical Cannabis Act lacks safeguards to such an extent that it would effectively legalize widespread recreational use of marijuana,” the resolution claims. “The legalization of marijuana would have devastating impacts on Idaho children and their families… The Legislature urges the citizens of Idaho to reject any effort to bring the Idaho Medical Cannabis Act to the ballot.”
A statement of purpose filed with the legislation says it “addresses the devastating impact that legalizing marijuana has had on other states” and “identifies the significant problems” with the ballot initiative.
Contrary to the claims made about marijuana reform in the legislative resolution, advocates often point to data showing that legalizing and regulating cannabis diminishes the size of the illegal market and has not led to increases in youth use.
Meanwhile, NMAI recently released an analysis showing that Idaho could see more than $100 million worth of medical marijuana sold on an annual basis and up to $28 million in new yearly revenue for state coffers if voters approved the legalization initiative.
The Idaho Medical Cannabis Act, which NMAI unveiled last October, would provide patients with qualifying conditions access to marijuana from a limited number of dispensaries and provide a regulatory framework for the market.
Here are the main provisions of the Idaho Medical Cannabis Act:
- 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 campaign in February also released the results of a statewide poll showing that 83 percent of likely voters back medical cannabis legalization, including 74 percent of Republicans, 95 percent of Democrats and 92 percent of independents.
Asked how they would vote if the current medical cannabis legalization does appear on the November ballot, 76 percent of respondents said “yes.” Of that cohort, 50 percent said they would “definitively” vote yes, and just 21 percent said they’d vote “no.”
After the medical cannabis initiative was unveiled last year, a separate campaign that launched in 2024, Kind Idaho, told supporters that it would be suspending its own signature gathering for a ballot initiative to legalize the personal possession and cultivation of marijuana by adults.
Kind Idaho previously introduced medical marijuana ballot measures intended to go before voters in both the 2022 and 2024 elections, but the efforts proved unsuccessful.
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Legislators separately held a hearing last year to discuss a bill to enact medical cannabis legalization legislatively, but there hasn’t been meaningful action on the issue in the months since.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) last year signed legislation setting a $300 mandatory minimum fine for marijuana possession. A prior version of the proposal, which did not pass, would have set a $420 mandatory minimum fine for possessing cannabis.
