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Idaho Legislature approves ivermectin deregulation, sending bill to governor • Idaho Capital Sun [1]
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Date: 2025-04-03
Updated editor’s note: A previous related article on the bill passing the Idaho Senate was mistakenly removed from the Idaho Capital Sun’s website Thursday afternoon. This article includes information from that article, and the bill’s House passage. This story was updated at 7:25 p.m. to include an interview from Rep. Steve Berch, the sole House lawmaker to oppose the bill.
In one day, the Idaho House and Senate floors widely passed a bill to let ivermectin be sold as an over-the-counter medicine.
Typically used to treat parasites in humans, ivermectin has drawn interest since the COVID pandemic — after largely conservative activists, doctors and politicians inaccurately touted it as an alternative medicine.
The U.S. Food and Drug and Administration, or FDA, hasn’t approved ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19, saying the federal agency finds existing clinical trial data don’t show “ivermectin is effective against COVID 19 in humans.”
Idaho’s Senate Bill 1211 would let ivermectin be sold over-the-counter, without a prescription or consultation with a health care professional.
Supporters argue making ivermectin more widely available for human use would avoid people buying versions of the drug intended for animals, and it would make human use safer by providing more information on appropriate doses.
Idaho lawmakers didn’t hear public feedback on the bill from doctors, pharmacists or health care professionals.
In arguments supporting the bill, Idaho Republican lawmakers often leaned into national rhetoric that inaccurately suggests ivermectin is a medical cure-all drug. That portrayal conflicts with national medical guidance that supports ivermectin in limited applications.
Dr. Sky Blue, who works with ivermectin in his practice as an infectious disease doctor in Idaho, told the Idaho Capital Sun the bill is part of a broader trend to promote unproven medical remedies and disregard their risks — over more proven treatments.
“We have had very well done, well-executed and favorable clinical trials showing that paxlovid, molnupiravir and remdesivir have positive effects (as anti-viral COVID treatments),” Blue said in a Tuesday interview. “And all the studies with ivermectin have not shown to have benefit,” adding that severe toxicities have been found in ivermectin’s COVID use.
Rep. Faye Thompson, R-McCall, said she recently went to a local feed store hoping to buy ivermectin for herself and her family to use, but stopped out of confusion over the appropriate dose.
Usually, the FDA handles whether drugs should be made available over-the-counter, a process that uses data on safety and effectiveness.
In the House, only 1 lawmaker voted against the bill. Several Democrats supported it.
On Thursday, the bill cleared both chambers of the Idaho Legislature, which appears to be approaching the final days of its 2025 legislative session.
In the Senate, the bill passed on a 25-9 vote. In the House, it passed with 66 votes in support and just a single vote in opposition: by Rep. Steve Berch, D-Boise.
Explaining his vote in an interview Thursday night, Berch told the Sun it wasn’t about ivermectin specifically.
“This is not the job of the Legislature,” which does not have a medical doctor or pharmacist among its membership, he said. “This is the job of trained, experienced professionals.”
Debating in favor of the bill, Rep. John Gannon, D-Boise, drew a comparison with medical marijuana.
“It’s the same argument. … There are people who believe that it works, that it is a better way of dealing with pain,” he argued.
The bill now heads to Idaho Gov. Brad Little for final consideration.
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If Idaho’s ivermectin deregulation bill becomes law, it would take effect immediately — through an emergency clause.
When the bill is transmitted to the governor, he has five days, excluding Sundays, to decide on it. He has three options: sign it into law, allow it to become law without his signature, or veto it.
The bill is cosponsored by the top Republicans in the Idaho House and Senate — Senate President Pro Tempore Kelly Anthon, R-Rupert and House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star — along with two other lawmakers: Sen. Tammy Nichols, R-Middleton, and Rep. Jordan Redman, R-Coeur d’Alene.
Pharmacies won’t be ready, Idaho industry representative testifies
One of only two people to testify in support of the fast-moving bill, an Idaho pharmacy industry representative testified that without an over-the-counter label, pharmacies can’t sell ivermectin over the counter.
The bill does not direct drug manufacturers to develop such a label, which could warn about the drug’s risks if used in too high of doses, or ivermectin’s interactions with other medications.
The FDA warns large doses of ivermectin “can be dangerous.” Overdoses can risk death, the federal regulator’s website says, and human-appropriate doses can interact with other medications, such as blood thinners.
Two states allow ivermectin to be sold over-the-counter, according to local news reports: Arkansas passed a law this year, and Tennessee passed a law three years ago. North Carolina is considering a similar bill.
Many Idaho Republican senators tap into ivermectin cure-all rhetoric — conflicting with medical guidance
When he pitched the bill in committee on Wednesday, bill cosponsor Anthon appeared to tap into the broader national rhetoric, saying ivermectin has been called a “wonder drug.”
“This is a drug that has had really immeasurable impacts on improving the lives of billions and billions of people throughout the world since it was discovered. It’s been called, in many places, a wonder drug,” Anthon, the top Idaho Senate Republican, told lawmakers in committee. “It’s been able to serve in treating and in many ways curing human diseases — treating parasites, worms in humans. And in most countries, it is legal over the counter.”
The Senate passed the bill on a 25-9 vote Thursday, sending the bill to the House. Five of the Senate’s six Democrats opposed the bill, joined by four Republicans; Democratic Sen. Ali Rabe, from Boise, was absent.
Sen. Tammy Nichols touts ivermectin as cure-all. Doctors, FDA disagree.
In opening arguments for the bill on the Senate floor, Nichols spoke for about seven minutes — out of the roughly 35-minute debate.
She listed a range of ailments people have used ivermectin for.
“Some people will use it like taking vitamins,” Nichols told lawmakers.
Anthon has said the bill would mean people aren’t turning to veterinarian sources to find the drug, arguing patients could use it more safely with better dosing information.
Stressing he wasn’t a doctor or pharmacist, Sen. Kevin Cook, R-Idaho Falls, said the doctors and pharmacists he’d talked with say making ivermectin available without a prescription is “not a good idea because there is no testing yet. … We don’t know all the benefits or the faults of it.”
Debating in favor of the bill, Sen. Carl Bjerke, R-Coeur d’Alene, incorrectly claimed the FDA never fully approved a COVID vaccine.
“If we’re using the FDA as the benchmark for what’s approved or not approved, if you trust that, I believe that — I don’t think the COVID shot ever got out of emergency use authorization. That was never approved by the FDA, as far as I’m concerned,” Bjerke told the Senate.
In 2021, the FDA approved Pfizer-BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine — which was the first COVID vaccine to advance past emergency use authorization.
Some committee members worried about lack of doctor input
The lack of input from medical experts drew consternation from some lawmakers on the Senate State Affairs Committee, which spent about a half hour considering the bill on Wednesday.
In committee, Sen. Treg Bernt, R-Meridian, said he wanted to talk to a couple doctors about the bill. But he repeatedly suggested the bill’s risk wasn’t high.
“I’m not a tin-hat-wearing legislator. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I think we’re going to be OK with ivermectin,” he said. “I’m not — certainly wouldn’t be against it, I guess. But I just … want to know more about it.”
On Thursday, Bernt voted for the bill on the Senate floor.
The committee’s only Democrat, Sen. James Ruchti, D-Pocatello, said he’d oppose the bill. He said the drug is being politicized.
“Political reasons are not a good basis for making a decision to make a prescription drug an over-the-counter drug,” Ruchti said in committee. “That decision should be driven by the science. It should be driven by data and research. And we have none of that in front of us.”
The committee’s chairman, Sen. Jim Guthrie, R-McCannon, said he’d oppose the bill in committee but he might change his mind later.
His younger brother took ivermectin when he got COVID, and “he thought he was going to die,” Guthrie told the committee.
“Now, was that the ivermectin or advanced COVID? Who knows. But he felt like it could have very, very well been the ivermectin. Did he think that if a little’s good, a lot will do better? Possibly. And maybe that’s … the risk you take when you don’t have that consultation,” Guthrie said.
Guthrie opposed the bill on the Senate floor, joined by four other Republican lawmakers: Sens. Van Burtenshaw, from Terreton; Cook; and Dave Lent, from Idaho Falls.
What the committee heard: Opposition from pharmacy industry representative, and support from attorney
Only two people testified on the bill:
Brian Festa, an attorney who is the co-founder of the nonprofit Caldwell-based public interest law firm We The Patriots USA . Saying he represented himself, Festa testified briefly in support of the bill. He referenced a lawsuit his law firm was involved in over a Minnesota patient’s struggle to get ivermectin as a need for the bill.
And Pam Eaton, the CEO of the Idaho Retailers Association which represents Idaho pharmacies. In the past eight hours, she told the committee she’d heard from more pharmacists than she’d heard from throughout this year’s Idaho legislative session, adding that 99% of people she’d heard from were opposed to the bill.
Eaton said without an over-the-counter label, pharmacies can’t sell ivermectin over-the-counter. Some might be able to, but she said most are saying they can’t.
Throughout her testimony, Eaton stressed she is not a pharmacist. But she relayed patient safety concerns she said she’d heard from a pharmacist about ivermectin.
“It has serious interactions with five medications, and requires close monitoring with 51 medications, including commonly used antibiotics, cholesterol, heart medications and other (over-the-counter) antihistamines,” Eaton said.
That’s the sort of information that would be on an over-the-counter medication label, she added.
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