Advocates in Idaho say they have gathered more than 100,000 signatures supporting a petition to put a medical cannabis legalization question on the November ballot, the Idaho Capital Sun reports.
Organized by the Natural Medicine Alliance of Idaho, the petition requires at least 70,725 valid voter signatures, which is 6% of registered voters, by April 30 to qualify. However, the total must also include at least 6% of registered voters from over half of the state’s 35 legislative districts.
Campaign spokesperson Amanda Watson told the Capital Sun on Friday that the campaign is “cautiously optimistic” about qualifying for the ballot.
“We are collecting thousands of signatures a day at this point to make sure that we get over that threshold in each legislative district. There’s some rural parts of Idaho that we’re working really hard to hit that 6% in. Right now, we’ve collected over 100,000 raw signatures.” — Watson, in the report
The petition proposes legalizing medical cannabis for patients with debilitating conditions, including chronic pain, cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, Crohn’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or Alzheimer’s disease.
Meanwhile, Idaho lawmakers recently passed a bipartisan resolution that urges voters to reject any medical cannabis legalization efforts in the state.
Lawmakers also passed a bill last year to put an initiative on the 2026 ballot asking voters to rescind their constitutional right to enact cannabis reforms or other drug reform laws via the ballot initiative process.
Idaho remains one of the only states in the U.S. that has yet to pass any significant cannabis reforms.
Adult-use cannabis is legal in four of the five states neighboring Idaho, as well as across its northern border with Canada.
