If pro-marijuana forces get their way, they’ll change the giant red maple leaf on the Canadian flag to a giant marijuana leaf. That seems to be the fear of some anti-marijuana people.

During the 2015 election campaign, Justin Trudeau and the Canadian Liberal Party vowed to make marijuana legal in Canada. Two years later, it looks as if they might keep this campaign promise. In early March 2017, Prime Minister Trudeau announced that Canadian government was working on plans to legalize marijuana and control how people buy and sell it.

Not everyone is happy with this decision, of course. The Canadian Conservative Party opposes both the Liberal Party and its pro-marijuana plans. Conservative leader Gerard Deltell worried that it would have long-term effects on the health of Canadians. In 2016, he cited the same concerns that many people have about legalizing marijuana: that it will hurt kids: “That’s one of the worst things you can to do Canadian youth—to open the door to marijuana … it’s wrong, all wrong.”

But the Canadian government is making marijuana legal to protect these young Canadians, according to Trudeau in 2017. He said that legalizing marijuana would allow the government to control it and keep it from the kids who currently have easy access to it.

Trudeau added that legalizing marijuana could decrease crime and increase treatment opportunities: “We feel that regulating it, controlling it will bring that revenue [from the sale of illegal marijuana] out of the pockets of criminals and put it into a system where we can both monitor, tax it and ensure that we are supporting people who are facing challenges related or unrelated to drug use.”

In early 2017, medical marijuana was legal in Canada and in about half of the states of the United States. A handful of U.S. states also allowed their residents to use marijuana legally for recreational purposes. Marijuana remained illegal on the federal level in the United States, which made Canada’s proposed pro-marijuana federal legislation even more intriguing.

Will developments in Canada influence drug policy in the United States? Will U.S. legislators use Canada as an example of what to do (or what not to do) when formulating drug legislation? Time will tell. These developments will be interesting, at the very least.