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Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump signed an ex­ec­u­tive or­der Thurs­day that would re­clas­si­fy mar­i­jua­na as a less dan­ger­ous drug and open new av­enues for med­ical re­search—a ma­jor shift in fed­er­al drug pol­i­cy that inch­es clos­er to what many states have done.

The switch would move mar­i­jua­na away from its cur­rent clas­si­fi­ca­tion as a Sched­ule I drug, along­side hero­in and LSD. Cannabis would in­stead be a Sched­ule III sub­stance, like ke­t­a­mine and some an­a­bol­ic steroids.

Re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion by the Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion would not make it le­gal for recre­ation­al use by adults na­tion­wide, but it could change how the drug is reg­u­lat­ed and re­duce a hefty tax bur­den on the cannabis in­dus­try.