During a recent press conference, White House press secretary Sean Spicer suggested the Trump administration would most likely be taking a stronger stance on states that had legalized the use of recreational marijuana “in accordance with federal law,” rather than turning a blind eye as the Obama administration had.

To date, eight states have passed laws to legalize the use of recreational marijuana: Alaska, California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Maine and Massachusetts. Another 19 permit the drug for medical use.

“There’s a big difference between (medical) and recreational marijuana. And I think that when you see something like the opioid addiction crisis blossoming in so many states around this country, the last thing we should be doing is encouraging people,” Spicer said. “There’s still a federal law that we need to abide by when it comes to recreational marijuana and other drugs of that nature.”

Spicer’s comments claiming using marijuana will lead people to opioids is not a new one. The “gateway drug” claim is as old as the drug war itself.

The problem is there’s very little evidence to back it up.

In fact, The National Institute on Drug Abuse — a government website — states in a research report “Is marijuana a gateway drug” that although there is some data that suggests marijuana users are more likely to drink alcohol or smoke nicotine, “the majority of people who use marijuana do not go on to use other, ‘harder’ substances.”

This isn’t “new science” — researchers have long been coming to the same conclusions.

In 1999 Congress commissioned a report on marijuana from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Again, the “gateway drug” theory was shut down.

“… underage smoking and alcohol use typically precede marijuana use, marijuana is not the most common, and is rarely the first, ‘gateway’ to illicit drug use,” the report reads. “There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.”

There have been dozens of more studies and hundreds of reports all reaching the same conclusion: Science just doesn’t back Spicer’s claims.

But while the White House is still fixated on the “gateway” fallacy, wiser states that have already accepted the science are happily raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

The revenues from taxing recreational marijuana earned Colorado $200 million in tax revenue — in a year.

Fears that legalizing the drug would lead to more teens smoking, higher crime rates and an increased number of traffic fatalities have also been unfounded.

In recent report, the Drug Policy Alliance took a hard look at Washington and Colorado, both states which have had legal recreational marijuana usage for the past three years. Studies conducted found no significant change in marijuana use among teens and violent crime rates were down.

The report also noted the traffic fatality rate remained “statistically consistent with pre-legalization levels, is lower in each state than it was a decade prior, and is lower than the national rate.”

The question becomes then: “Why is the White House now threatening ‘greater enforcement’ of federal marijuana laws when it has consistently dodged other issues — like transgender bathroom use — as state rights?”

It should be noted that recreational marijuana is also legal in Washington D.C.