Idaho's Fentanyl Trafficking Law Is Charging Users, Not Dealers

Two years after Idaho began treating possession of four grams of fentanyl as trafficking, prosecutors across the state have filed 134 trafficking charges under the law, and at least 30 of those defendants were never accused of selling or distributing the drug, according to an InvestigateWest review of court records published Monday.

The law, House Bill 406, took effect July 1, 2024, and it does not distinguish between people who use fentanyl and people who sell it. Prosecutors can file a trafficking charge on possession alone — four grams, or 100 pills containing fentanyl — and conviction carries a mandatory minimum of three, five or 10 years in prison depending on the amount. The bill's sponsors, Republican Rep. Ted Hill and Sen. Todd Lakey, said during the January 2024 hearing that it was aimed at cartels, not at people struggling with addiction.

The review examined every fentanyl trafficking case filed through June 30 of this year. Of the 90 cases that included arrest reports, one-third lacked the combination of scales, ledgers and small baggies that investigators typically cite as evidence of dealing. Those defendants were still charged with trafficking, and their exposure was set by the weight of the fentanyl police said they found.

What the case files show

The records describe arrests that began as something other than a trafficking investigation. In Nez Perce County, a sheriff's deputy arrested a man for drug possession after he dropped a bag of blue pills on a casino floor. After counting 111 pills, the deputy wrote in his report that he "changed the charge from possession, to trafficking Fentanyl."

Fifteen of the people charged were accused by police of selling to an informant or admitted to selling, and seven of them were convicted and are serving prison time. Twenty-two people in total were convicted of the trafficking charge. About 30 percent of completed cases were dismissed, and nearly half ended in plea deals for other charges such as possession, according to the review's tally. Thirteen people were routed into substance use treatment instead of prison — every one of them through a plea to a different charge, because the mandatory minimums leave no room for a treatment sentence.

Charges were filed in 18 of Idaho's 44 counties. Six counties account for more than 75 percent of them. Bonneville County Prosecuting Attorney Randy Neal, an outspoken supporter of the law, has filed 28 — more than any other county, a figure he attributes to a county sheriff's department and Idaho Falls police drug task force working Interstate 15.

"The effectiveness of the law enforcement is what you're seeing the numbers reflect," Neal told InvestigateWest. Asked about cases without evidence of dealing, he said: "Treatment is not the right outcome for every case. Accountability is just as important."

The case that began in a hospital room

Isaac Berger was the first person charged under the law in Latah County. He was arrested at a hospital in Moscow in May 2025 after an emergency room nurse treating him for an overdose reported him to police, according to the review. His mother had brought the fentanyl to the hospital in an effort to help clinicians save him.

Berger and his attorney were working on a treatment plan they hoped would reduce the charges. He died at home two months later of fentanyl poisoning — one of two Idahoans who fatally overdosed while their trafficking case was pending. Latah County Prosecuting Attorney Bill Thompson, who filed the charge, said limiting judicial discretion was the point.

"Historically, in our part of the state, our judges have not been particularly strong on what we consider to be appropriate punishments for people who actually are dealing the drugs, not just users," Thompson said.

In Boise, Andrea Forbini was charged after police served a search warrant at her home in May 2025 and found nearly 400 pills containing fentanyl. Two roommates were arrested; only Forbini was charged with trafficking. Her daughter, Halle Lillquist, said her mother had survived an overdose weeks earlier and had been using drugs to manage pain from autoimmune conditions.

Jail kept Forbini sober for about three months, Lillquist said, but she received no addiction treatment, relapsed after her release and died of fentanyl poisoning a week later. "They shouldn't have let her go so freely like that without any help," Lillquist said.

A threshold that most states do not use

Idaho is one of nine states that allow a trafficking charge based on possession above a set amount, according to a 2025 summary of state fentanyl statutes by the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association. Seven of the nine impose mandatory minimums. Idaho is the only one that lets prosecutors substitute a pill count for a weight measurement, which means the charge can hinge on how an officer counts.

Kellen Russoniello, director of public health for the Drug Policy Alliance, told InvestigateWest that a person with a high tolerance, or someone who buys in bulk on payday, could plausibly cross the 100-pill line without any intent to sell. "This law is ensnaring people who are possessing for personal use," he said.

Mike French, an attorney who opposed the bill for the Idaho Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, put it shorter: "This is a sledge hammer when we need a scalpel."

Fentanyl deaths were already falling

Fentanyl killed 197 people in Idaho in 2023, the state's worst year, according to the Department of Health and Welfare's overdose dashboard. Deaths had begun to decline by the time the trafficking law took effect in mid-2024, and last year's toll matched 2024's.

The review places Idaho inside a broader national turn back toward mandatory minimums. A decade-old National Institute of Justice report concluded that "increasing the severity of punishment does little to deter crime," and a 2018 Pew analysis found that reduced drug sentences in Oklahoma, Mississippi and Alaska shrank prison populations and taxpayer costs without raising crime. Katrina Baugh of Families Against Mandatory Minimums argued that mandatory terms move sentencing power from judges to prosecutors, "the party that has a self-interest of pursuing harsher punishments in every case."

For families in Idaho, the practical question is what happens between arrest and release. People who need medication-assisted treatment or a bed in a residential program often leave jail without either, a gap that has been documented across states that have tightened drug penalties. Idaho's own experience with earlier trafficking statutes follows the same pattern French described: the people caught are usually the ones using, not the ones importing.

Idaho is not the only state weighing the tradeoff this year. Colorado voters are deciding a ballot measure that would add fentanyl-specific penalties, a contest covered in earlier reporting on Proposition 132, and Congress is considering a broader rewrite of the Controlled Substances Act. What the Idaho records add is a measurement: in a state that promised to target dealers, roughly a third of the trafficking cases examined produced no evidence that anyone was dealing.