Idaho bill to allow ivermectin sales over the counter passes Senate

In what appears to be the near end of this year’s Idaho legislative session, Idaho Republican legislative leaders are backing — and quickly approving — 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 touted it as an alternative medicine. But 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 that 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.

On Monday, it was introduced. On Wednesday, it passed by a Senate committee. On Thursday, it passed the Senate. 

All that happened without public input from medical professionals. 

Dr. Sky Blue, who works with ivermectin in his practice as infectious disease doctor in Idaho, told the Idaho Capital Sun that 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. 

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 Senate President Pro Tempore Kelly Anthon, R-Rupert, 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. 

The bill now heads to the House. To become law, Idaho bills must pass the House and Senate, and avoid the governor’s veto. 

If Idaho’s ivermectin deregulation bill becomes law, it would take effect immediately — through an emergency clause.

The bill is cosponsored by the top Republicans in the Idaho House and Senate — Anthon 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. 

Sen. Tammy Nichols touts ivermectin as cureall. Doctors, FDA disagree. 

On Thursday, Republican lawmakers who debated in favor of the bill the Idaho Senate also tapped into the national cure-all rhetoric around ivermectin. 

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.

The FDA warns that 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. 

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.” 

Usually, the FDA handles whether drugs should be made available over-the-counter, a process that uses data on safety and effectiveness.

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. 

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.