Idaho Republican lawmakers were so freaked out about the prospect of voters liberalizing the state’s marijuana laws that twice they tried to gut the initiative process.
Sen. Jim Guthrie, R-McCammon, called it the “elephant in the room.”
“I’m not as fearful of things that may be coming in the future as others are — certainly a big concern has been marijuana,” he said. “Certainly the speculation has been that’s part of the reason.”
In 2019, Gov. Brad Little’s veto stopped the Legislature’s assault on the initiative.
Two years later, it was the Idaho Supreme Court that came to the public’s rescue by overturning an anti-initiative measure that had passed, this time with Little’s approval.
Not to be outdone, one of the architects behind efforts to keep Idaho safe from Cheech and Chong wannabes, Sen. C. Scott Grow, R-Eagle, went so far as to propose a constitutional amendment that would bar the people of his state from ever erasing even part of Idaho’s marijuana prohibition without the Legislature’s approval.
It turns out the “elephant in the room” is more like a field mouse.
As the Idaho Statesman’s Ryan Suppe reported last week, the organization behind a medicinal marijuana ballot measure — Kind Idaho — gave up the effort after collecting about one-tenth of the nearly 70,000 voter signatures required.
Marijuana legalization efforts have been under way in Idaho for 12 years. But in the time virtually all but one of Idaho’s neighboring states have taken that step, the Gem State has remained solidly anti-pot.
It could be that a lack of funding from national groups and organizational problems at the local level have thwarted efforts to tap into public support, even in Idaho, for a more lenient policy.
“We ran into some issues along the way with basically starting up a grassroots organization without any sort of financial backing or assistance,” Joe Evans, treasurer for Kind Idaho, told the Idaho Statesman.
The same fate struck efforts to decriminalize marijuana in the state.
“Why? No money,” Legalize the Idaho Way leader Russ Belville said in a recent social media post.
Still, it makes you wonder what were Guthrie’s colleagues afraid of?
If it wasn’t the bogeyman of reefer madness, what got under their skins so much that they were willing to challenge the people’s constitutional right to make their own laws at the ballot box?
Could it be — as it appeared at the time — that Republican lawmakers did not like having the voters rise up against their obstructionism and extend Medicaid coverage to the state’s working poor?
Was it fear that the state’s urban masses may one day embrace an initiative calling for more humane treatment of livestock, especially those held in closed, confined settings?
How about the idea that voters of this state may one day decide they’re no longer going to tolerate the Legislature setting a $7.25 an hour minimum wage?
Is it because anti-public education outlets, such as the Idaho Freedom Foundation, are getting alarmed about the apparent momentum behind Reclaim Idaho’s Quality Education Act? If approved, that measure would reverse years of legislative engineered tax cuts for big corporations and wealthy individuals — freeing up $323 million a year more for public education.
Could it be this simple: The people who invested money in campaign contributions and lobbyists prefer to influence 105 lawmakers rather than 1.8 million Idahoans?
All of which would suggest this talk of legalized pot in Idaho was a smokescreen for what the GOP wanted to do all along. — M.T.
