After Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Alaska, is Maine next in line to completely legalize marijuana? That’s the hope of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol, an activist group petitioning for marijuana regulation in this state. Last week, the group filed initial paperwork to get the question on ballot papers in the 2016 election. Whether or not Mainers ever vote on the issue is contingent upon the Secretary of State’s approval and the proponents collecting 62,000 signatures. If current national trends play out here as they have in other states, it seems very likely that Maine will legalize marijuana next November.

At a federal level, by contrast, legalization is a long way off. Under current law, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I substance, the category reserved for the most dangerous narcotics that, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, “have no currently accepted medical use in the United States, a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision, and a high potential for abuse.” 

When we talk about marijuana legalization, we should not approach the issue from the standpoint that it will only help people who want to get high. To think about marijuana purely in terms of its psychoactive properties is to ignore the plant’s extraordinary medical potential. Cannabis-derived medicines are used to treat chemotherapy-induced nausea, cancer cells, migraines, Crohn’s disease and multiple sclerosis. Studies overseas are currently underway to determine the effectiveness of high-CBD strains of marijuana in treating childhood epilepsy; thus far, the results look promising. 

Associate Professor of Visual Arts Mike Kolster and his wife Christy Shake have seen the impact of high-CBD marijuana on their son, Calvin, who has suffered from epilepsy since he was two years old. Over the years, they tried different diets and countless drugs, none of which helped to effectively reduce the occurrence of his seizures. When Calvin was on one of his most powerful cocktail of antiepileptic drugs, he still suffered up to 12 seizures a month. Although the drugs help mitigate the worst effects of seizures, they also smother brain activity and in some cases exacerbate epilepsy’s impact on cognitive development. Since switching to a mix of two drugs and two cannabis oils, Calvin suffers far fewer seizures (down to three or four a month). What’s more, Shake says that he now enjoys “improved sleep, improved mood, improved focus and less hyperactivity,” which has allowed her to “wean him off of 70 percent of his benzodiazepine.” While one family’s example cannot compare to the rigors of a thorough clinical study, Shake and Kolster have noted that medical marijuana has had a noticeable impact on their son’s well-being.

For now, however, anecdotes are really the only gauge of medical marijuana’s effectiveness. Because marijuana shares the same schedule as heroin, LSD and ecstasy, research in the United States is highly regulated and in order to acquire research-grade marijuana, scientists have to have their projects approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the DEA and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. In August 2014, the New York Times described the byzantine process that researchers have to follow in order to conduct clinical trials, many of which are rejected because they have the potential of portraying marijuana in a positive light.

Despite the popular push for a relaxation of marijuana’s status, neither Congress nor President Obama has an appetite for change. To their credit, Congress recently (and quietly) approved a change to federal marijuana regulations. Under the new law, federal agents are prohibited from raiding medical marijuana dispensaries in states where the drug has been approved for therapeutic use. It is an encouraging move from the federal government, but it is far from what is necessary to expand research into cannabis-derived medicine. Unfortunately for marijuana advocates, the shift in marijuana policy necessary would require changes that neither Congress nor President Obama are willing to make. In a recent interview with Vice News, the President commented, “legalizing marijuana shouldn’t be young people’s biggest priority.” Young people, Obama said, should be “thinking about climate change, the economy, jobs, war and peace.” It’s true that there are many important issues facing our world today and it can seem that the right to light up a joint falls fairly low on the list of priorities. But the legalization (or at least the decriminalization) of marijuana has significant implications that go far beyond just getting high. For every moral or ethical reason that may be presented to maintain the status quo, there are dozens of Calvins, countless victims of PTSD and innumerable people in pain who need the research. For their sake alone, legalizing marijuana is a cause worthy of being a priority.