Advocates are preparing to feature adult-use marijuana legalization reform in Idaho’s 2022 ballot. This comes after conservative states such as South Dakota and Montana passed recreational cannabis legalization measures last month. Idaho’s new effort comes amid a different initiative to avail a medical marijuana reform before voters in the midterm election.
There is scanty data regarding the provisions of the recreational policy and the campaign’s next move, however, legislators and other leaders believe Idaho is ripe for an extensive policy change.
An effort to include medical marijuana legislation on the state’s ballot in 2020 was thwarted, thanks to signature collection difficulties due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During October, the ICC (Idaho Citizens Coalition) re-filed a proposal to get the revised reform completed by 2022. However, that initiative is now being transferred to a disparate group, Kind Idaho.
According to Russ Belville (who formerly served as the campaign’s spokesman of the medicinal marijuana measure via the ICC), he’ll be the main petitioner of the recently proposed IML (Idaho Marijuana Legalization) Act.
Russ said that the campaign’s stakeholders are interested in the aspects of Idaho’s recreational cannabis legalization come 2022. He added that with South Dakota’s approval of recreational marijuana, they’re now optimistic that a red state can also achieve it. Montana’s recreational marijuana decriminalization indicates that the imitative is popular within this territory.
With South Dakotans approving both measures during 2020’s Election Day, pushing for recreational and medicinal cannabis simultaneously is lately going viral. Up to that moment, all states gunning for adult-use cannabis decriminalization in the past had existing marijuana regulation on books.
Belville pointed out that Nebraska activists are also currently in the quest to place both adult-use and medical marijuana on the 2022 ballot.
Russ added that there’s the financial aspect of implementing the change since Idaho is proficiently lodged between several states where adults are authorized to buy marijuana. More than half the population is also living within a 60-minutes’ drive of a licensed pot store.
