The first bipartisan marijuana bill to pass Congress went ahead with unanimous consent last week. But it wasn’t the legislation that the cannabis industry has been hoping for.

The Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research Expansion Act, passed on Nov. 16 by the US Senate, was drafted by Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a nonprofit that opposes marijuana’s legalization and defines its mission as preventing another Big Tobacco. If US President Joe Biden signs it into law, it will speed research on cannabis, encourage the Food and Drug Administration to develop marijuana-derived medicines and require the Department of Health and Human Services to report to Congress on the benefits and harms of marijuana, according to the group.

“If marijuana is being presented as medicine, it should be treated as such and researched as such,” SAM Chief Executive Officer Kevin Sabet said in an emailed statement. The bill, sponsored by Republican lawmakers Andy Harris and Chuck Grassley, as well as Democrats Earl Blumenauer, Brian Schatz and Dianne Feinstein, shows that marijuana doesn’t need to be legalized on the federal level for more research to be done, the group said.

The train has clearly left the station, given nearly half of the US lives in states where marijuana is legally sold. But there are precedents of regulations being made after a drug is in wide use. For example, after more than a century of cigarette smoking, the FDA recently proposed a rule to limit nicotine levels.