Last week’s executive order by President Trump to reclassify cannabis as a less dangerous drug is being heralded by Maine’s marijuana industry as “the most progress in cannabis policy in decades.”

But members aren’t ready to celebrate yet.

At face value, reclassifying the drug from Schedule I to Schedule III could be a boon for Maine’s two cannabis markets by opening up more opportunities for research and allowing business owners to deduct ordinary business expenses, something that is currently prohibited for businesses dealing in or “trafficking” schedule I and II substances.

Many in the industry, though, say the directive lacks teeth. It orders the U.S. Attorney General to work faster on a process that has been in the works since May 2024 but does not officially reclassify cannabis immediately.

It also does not legalize the drug, which remains illegal at that federal level, and some fear any changes could open the door for “big pharma” to take over Maine’s craft cannabis industry.

A STEP IN THE ‘RIGHT DIRECTION’

Matt Hawes near the brite tanks at his Novel Beverage Co. facility in Scarborough in July 2023: Hawes is the head of the Maine Cannabis Industry Association and owner of Novel Beverage Co., which makes THC-based drinks. (Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer)

Matt Hawes, a founding member of the Maine Cannabis Industry Association, said he’s approaching the executive order with a sense of “cautious optimism.”

“It does appear to be another step in the direction of more appropriately placing this in the social and legal framework of our society,” Hawes said. “It has always been impossible to rationalize it as a schedule I drug. It’s still hard to rationalize it as a schedule III.”

Schedule I drugs are the most dangerous, meaning they have high abuse potential with no accepted medical use. Heroin and LSD are also schedule I drugs.

Schedule III drugs, which include ketamine and Tylenol with codeine, have recognized medical uses but moderate to low potential for abuse.

It’s the most progress in cannabis policy in decades, he said, and will allow more research opportunities that have so far largely been stymied by the government’s Schedule I designation. 

Scientists have long described the problem as a catch-22: They can’t conduct research on cannabis until they demonstrate it has a medical use, and they can’t show the plant has a medical use until they conduct research.

In 2018, state statute established a medical cannabis research grant program, which authorized the department to provide grant money from the state’s Medical Use of Cannabis Fund to “support objective scientific research” on the plant’s medicinal uses. 

So far, that fund has gone untapped, but that could change with a new designation, McCarrier said.

“Maine has another opportunity to be a leader in the cannabis industry and we should not waste it,” he said.

The Maine Office of Cannabis Policy, the state’s regulatory agency, said reducing barriers to research and the “significant tax relief” that would come from allowing tax deductions are the only two changes the program is likely to see. 

“Across the past three presidential administrations, the Justice Department has taken a non-enforcement approach against state-regulated medical and adult use cannabis programs, and OCP fully expects there to be no change to that posture,” the agency said last year after the Biden administration announced plans to reclassify the drug.

A LOT TO LOSE

Tax deductions will of course create “improvement in the bottom line” for small businesses, but the change should not be seen as a win for the industry, said Mark Barnett, policy director for the Maine Craft Cannabis Association.

Rather, he said, “it’s removing something that is a truly grotesque abuse of the businesses that operate in this space.” 

Barnett is hopeful that the government will eventually de-schedule the drug, which he said is the “only legal, only realistic interpretation of this agricultural product.” 

But he’s also wary that the Trump administration will try to intervene in a program that has historically been left to the states to manage. 

“It won’t matter if you’re in the medical market, it won’t matter if you’re in the adult-use market, it won’t matter if you’re in the CBD market. We all stand to lose a lot through federal involvement in cannabis policy,” he said. 

That’s also why Hawes, of the Maine Cannabis Industry Association, isn’t more enthusiastic.

“There’s still plenty of unknowns related to this situation, but we know we’re introducing a new regulatory agency in the FDA and it’s unclear what types of regulations they may impose,” he said.

If they continue to defer to the state, the long-running small business model will likely continue.

“If they come in with an iron fist stance that everything has to be done in an FDA licensed facility,” however, “the investments that it would take to achieve those standards are likely unattainable for any business in Maine,” he said.

Hawes added that the news of possible reclassification is just the latest in what has been a “dizzying” few weeks for the cannabis industry, which is also contending with the effective re-criminalization of hemp and dealing with recent recalls of recreational product and plateauing sales. There is also a referendum petition to close the recreational market and ongoing legislative efforts to increase oversight of the medical market.

To be sure, singing about climate change can be a tough sell.

“It was scary at first,” Zak said. “When you write love songs or other popular music, there are set maps to follow. Trying to incorporate climate change into music isn’t something a lot of people do.”

But it seems to be working. The band, GoldenOak, has around 20,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and counting, and their top song has more than 300,000 listens. A previous project from the band won EP of the year by the Portland Music Awards.

GoldenOak, made up of siblings Zak and Lena Kendall, bassist Mike Knowles, and drummer Jackson Cromwell, formed around 2016. As the band’s main lyricist, Zak draws on his background in ecology and his close attention to how climate change is reshaping daily life in Maine.

At the College of the Atlantic, he studied human ecology, immersing himself in climate science and environmental issues while sneaking in song writing between classes. After graduating, he dove into climate activism as executive director of Maine Youth for Climate Justice.

Then he began to notice something: tropes of displacement, violent storms, and dying forests were bleeding into his lyrics. He saw a way to combine his passions of climate activism and folk music, and that convergence has defined his songwriting ever since.

Bands like AJR and Grammy-winning artist Jon Batiste have also sung about climate change. “As an artist, you have to make a statement,” Batiste said in an interview with Covering Climate Now. “You got to bring people together. People’s power is the way that you can change things in the world.”

Batiste called “Petrichor,” his recent song, “a warning set to a dance beat.” GoldenOak’s discography has taken it a step further, featuring multiple conceptual albums bringing climate urgency into the folk tradition.

The band’s first climate-focused album, Room to Grow, is a ten-song invitation to climate action, laying out what’s at stake and why the natural world is worth protecting.

In “Ash,” for instance, Kendall frames the loss of ash trees as a kind of breakup song — a farewell to a species that once filled the forests where he grew up. This was the wood he carved into canoe paddles, and that Wabanaki basket makers relied on for generations, a tree species now disappearing under the spread of the emerald ash borer.

Most of the album leans somber, with nine tracks moving between poetic depictions of ecological loss, frontline activist anthems, and moments of climate hopelessness. But its most popular song, “little light,” reaches in the opposite direction: a hopeful ode to renewable energy and indigenous knowledge.

“Music can be a powerful form of activism,” Zak said. “Over time I found a way to incorporate my lived experience, academic research and frontline stories to tell these stories.”

It’s a hard balance, Zak explains. Push the climate narrative too far and suddenly you’re just singing statistics; lean too much on personal experience and it becomes just another introspective track.

With All the Light in Autumn, released December 5, Zak keeps testing that balance. Ten birds on the album cover represent its ten songs. Some, like “The Flood” and “All the Birds,” return to themes of ecological loss, while others pull back to connect climate change to the political forces shaping it.

Written in the weeks after the presidential election, the song “Always Coming, Always Going” confronts the environmental protections dismantled under the Trump administration. Other tracks take aim at resource extraction under capitalism, environmental inequity, and the hollow myth of the American dream.

“Before this album came out people kept asking me if this one would be about climate change too,” Zak said. “And I think the answer is always going to be yes because climate change touches every aspect of our lives.”

Folk music grappled with environmental themes long before the genre’s famed artists recognized them — ballads about coal country, songs about scarred landscapes. Now, the relentless cycle of climate impacts may push more artists to write about it, extending even into mainstream pop.

“Music can help people process their emotions about climate change,” said Fabian Holt, a former music sociologist at Roskilde University in Denmark who now studies climate and culture. “But it can also serve as a medium for mobilization.”

“Just writing these songs about climate change doesn’t always feel like enough,” Zak said. “We try to lean into our role as activists, creating spaces for people to gather and share their own stories.” GoldenOak uses its platform to promote voting initiatives, amplify protests, and sometimes even perform at them.

Back onstage, Zak and Lena lean into the microphone to dedicate their most beloved song to climate activists and people living on the frontlines. Its lyrics insist on hope, even when climate progress falters. As the crowd joins in, humming, singing or whispering the words to themselves, it becomes clear how music can turn shared climate grief into collective resolve.

This story is published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment.