Idaho Campaign Files Final Version Of Marijuana Legalization Measure For 2026 Ballot

An Idaho campaign working to put a personal-use marijuana legalization initiative on the state’s 2026 ballot has filed a final version of its proposal with the secretary of state. If all goes according to schedule, backers would begin collecting signatures by the end of the month.

The group Kind Idaho announced its submission of the would-be initiative on Friday. Organizers had submitted a preliminary iteration of the noncommercial cannabis legalization proposal in September, and they’ve spent recent weeks revising its language in response to feedback from the state attorney general’s office and secretary of state.

The state attorney general’s office has 10 business days to review the latest version of the measure and issue a ballot title and summary. Supporters expect to begin gathering signatures shortly after that.

“We will begin collecting signatures before November ends,” the campaign said Friday in an email to supporters. “Together, we will make this happen.”

The group has requested the ballot title “Decriminalize Cannabis Now.”

Organizers will need to gather roughly 70,000 valid voter signatures to put the initiative on the 2026 ballot, though Idaho requires that campaigns also collect signatures representing at least 6 percent of registered voters in 18 of 35 legislative districts across the state.

The deadline for submitting petitions is still some time away, in April 2026.

In its latest version, the prospective ballot measure would exempt people 21 and older from Idaho laws against the “possession, production, or cultivation of cannabis” provided that certain conditions are met. Marijuana would need to be “for personal use and not for sale or resale” and could not be consumed in a “public or open setting.”

Marijuana would further need to be secured in peoples’ homes or private property in a manner that prevents access by minors.

The reform would apply not just to cannabis flower but also products such as “oils, tinctures, gummies and other edibles,” among other form factors.

Cultivation, meanwhile, would be capped at 12 plants. Adults could keep up to 8 ounces of marijuana harvested from the plants provided it’s secured in the home.

In general, however, possession would be limited to just one ounce of cannabis flower or up to 1,000 milligrams of THC in other marijuana products.

The proposal is clear that it would not legalize commercial activity around the drug.

“Nothing in this section,” it says, “shall be construed to allow private or commercial sale or resale of any controlled substance.”

Joe Evans, the treasurer and a lead organizer for the campaign, told Marijuana Moment on Friday that backers believe marijuana should be fully decriminalized “without giving carte blanche to corporate marijuana in Idaho.”

“We still have a culture of fear about the plant to overcome,” he added, “and we believe this a gentle stepping stone that creates access for our patients and caregivers without violating their privacy.”

The new effort is a revised attempt at cannabis reform following years of unsuccessfully trying to legalize a more extensively regulated medical marijuana system in the state. Kind Idaho, which previously introduced medical marijuana ballot measures intended to go before voters in both the 2022 and 2024 elections, believes a more narrowly focused bill might be more palatable to voters.

A poll from about two years ago, Evans told Marijuana Moment in an interview earlier this year, showed about 65 percent support for medical marijuana legalization in the state and nearly 80 percent support for ending penalties for personal use. By contrast, only about 40 percent of respondents backed commercial legalization of cannabis for adults.

“They don’t want it sold here,” he said of Idaho voters. “They just don’t want people getting arrested for it.”

Nevertheless, in an email to Marijuana Moment after filing the final ballot language on Friday, Evans also acknowledged the challenge in trying to address the interests of various stakeholders in such a condensed proposal.

“Our biggest problem was writing a policy that gave space for those who self cultivate and produce to manage self care effectively while allowing room for law enforcement and the judicial system to give space to those in violation of our personal use goals,” he said.

In 2021, a separate group of activists began gathering signatures for a similar ballot initiative that would have allowed adults to possess up to 3 ounces of marijuana on private property, though home cultivation would have been prohibited.

Though the measure didn’t make Idaho’s ballot, the idea was for consumers to be able to buy cannabis in neighboring states that have legal retail operations and then bring back the product to be consumed privately at home.

“All we’re asking [voters] to do is to accept what people were already doing: driving across the border legally purchasing marijuana and bringing it home to smoke,” organizer Russ Belville said at the time. “If Idaho still wants to give away the tax money, that’s fine. But we shouldn’t spend more tax money trying to arrest people in a futile attempt to stop them.”

Lawmakers in Idaho, meanwhile, have in recent months weighed ways to further tighten the state’s prohibition on marijuana.

A bill from Rep. Bruce Skaug (R) earlier this year, for example, would have set a $420 mandatory minimum fine for cannabis possession, removing judges’ discretion to apply lower penalties. Skaug said the bill, which ultimately stalled in committee, would send the message that Idaho is tough on marijuana.

House lawmakers also passed a bill to ban marijuana advertisements, though the Senate later defeated the measure.

As for Kind Idaho’s latest medical cannabis proposal, the campaign submitted initial paperwork for the initiative back in 2022, noting that the proposal was “essentially identical” to one the group filed two years earlier but which similarly failed to make the ballot.

Read a copy of Kind Idaho’s newly submitted ballot proposal below:

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