October 15, 2026
As Plain as the Nose on Your Face: Why HJR 4 Is a “Yes”
By: Julianne Young
In 2020, Oregon voters passed Measure 110 and became the first state to decriminalize hard drugs. Possessing fentanyl, heroin, or meth became a $100 ticket with a treatment hotline number attached. Voters were promised that marijuana tax dollars would build a recovery system for everyone who called.
Only 4 percent called. Treatment money crawled out the door while open-air drug use took over Portland’s streets. Between 2022 and 2023, Oregon’s overdose deaths rose 11 percent while the national number barely moved.
Oregonians didn’t write Measure 110. The New York-based Drug Policy Alliance did, and they bankrolled the campaign to pass it. Then they went home. Oregon families paid the price for three years. Finally, Oregon’s Democrat-controlled Legislature voted, with bipartisan support, to roll the measure back.
This election, HJR 4 can protect Idaho from the same foul play.
Of the 24 states with recreational marijuana, most got there through initiatives, including Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and Montana. And drug legalization no longer stops at marijuana. Oregon legalized psilocybin mushrooms in 2020, and Colorado followed in 2022. That’s why HJR 4 covers “other psychoactive substances.”
What does HJR 4 do?
HJR 4 amends the Idaho Constitution so that only your representatives in the State Legislature can legalize marijuana, narcotics, or other psychoactive substances. Since 1934, our Constitution has given the Legislature full authority over alcohol. HJR 4 applies the same rule to drugs. And every year, when lawmakers update Idaho’s drug schedules, any Idahoan can testify. Now it needs your approval, because only voters can amend our Constitution.
What’s at stake
Drug abuse is never a private choice. Even after a sharp drop in 2024, overdoses killed an estimated 80,391 Americans that year, and overdose remains the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 44. Nearly 19 million children live with a parent or caregiver who has a substance use disorder, and more than 321,000 lost a parent to overdose in the decade ending in 2021. Parental drug use was the main reason for 36 percent of children entering foster care by 2017, up from about 15 percent in 2000. The opioid epidemic alone cost the nation nearly $1.5 trillion in 2020.
Marijuana is no exception. Today’s product is far more potent than a generation ago, and a National Institutes of Health study estimated that as many as 30 percent of schizophrenia cases among men ages 21 to 30 could have been prevented by avoiding cannabis use disorder.
Follow the money
The pro-drug lobby knows it’s cheaper to buy a signature drive than to persuade a legislature. Your legislator has to face you at the grocery store and live under the laws they pass. A national PAC never does.
In Florida in 2024, a single marijuana company, Trulieve, spent roughly $145 million pushing legalization. Measure 110’s backers outspent Oregon opponents 35 to 1.
Whom do we trust?
My youngest son recently played Pinocchio in a community play, complete with a mechanical nose that actually grew. Everyone could tell when Pinocchio lied. His harder lesson was learning whom to trust: Geppetto, who loved him; Jiminy Cricket, who told him the truth; or the Fox, who told him just what he wanted to hear.
Initiative campaigns don’t have growing noses to warn us, and they have no Jiminy Cricket. They disband the day after they win, and no one answers for what the ads promised.
Idaho has learned this. Medicaid expansion was sold in 2018 as help for working Idahoans, yet when the Legislature added a work requirement, critics called it defying the voters. I said then on the House floor, and I believe now: there is no such thing as freedom without personal responsibility.
Idaho saw it again this year. Medical cannabis backers reportedly spent more than $2 million, hired a professional signature firm, and claimed 150,000 signatures. The state verified 58,024. The Secretary of State referred problems to law enforcement, including a dead voter’s signature and 293 circulators of unverified residency. The campaign blamed its contractor. But it will be back.
The decision belongs here
Without a nose-ometer, Idahoans must learn from experience, including our neighbors’ hard experience. The Fox always has a good pitch, and he never stays to live with the consequences. Our elected representatives do. On November 3, vote YES on HJR 4, shut out big-money special interests, and keep these decisions with people who have to look Idahoans in the eye.
Julianne Young is a Bingham County Mom who loves faith, family, and freedom; a former state representative; founder of the nonprofit Idaho Family Strong; regional coordinator for Idaho Chooses Life; and 2nd Vice Chair of the Idaho State GOP.
