Although this probably goes against everything you’ve ever thought about marijuana and the laid-back stereotype of people who use it, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested earlier this week that legalizing weed would lead to an increase in violence. “I don’t think America is going to be a better place when people of all ages, and particularly young people, are smoking pot,” Sessions said to reporters on Monday, per The Huffington Post. “I believe it’s an unhealthy practice, and current levels of THC in marijuana are very high compared to what they were a few years ago, and we’re seeing real violence around that.”

Sessions also said he had a meeting on Monday with Doug Peterson, the attorney general of Nebraska, who expressed his own concerns about marijuana coming into the state from Colorado, where pot is legal. “Experts are telling me there’s more violence around marijuana than one would think, and there’s big money involved,” Sessions said.

He added that one reason for the violence is people not paying for their drugs: “You can’t sue somebody for drug debt; the only way to get your money is through strong-arm tactics, and violence tends to follow that,” he said. And he had this to say about the legality of pot distribution: “States, they can pass the laws they choose. I would just say it does remain a violation of federal law to distribute marijuana throughout any place in the United States, whether a state legalizes it or not.”

This isn’t the first time Sessions has expressed a distaste for pot.

During a Senate drug hearing in April, he offered up this juicy quote that’s been repeated several times since: “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.”

Sessions’ comments come less than a week after press secretary Sean Spicer announced that states will see “greater enforcement” of federal laws around marijuana. Spicer even linked pot use to the opioid epidemic, saying, per The Washington Post, “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. There is still a federal law that we need to abide by when it comes to recreational marijuana and drugs of that nature.”

Marijuana—both recreational and medicinal—is illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act.

However, recreational marijuana has been legalized in eight states and Washington, D.C., and 28 states have legalized medicinal marijuana, i.e., marijuana that patients can purchase with a doctor’s prescription.

States have managed to circumvent the federal law under guidance issued by former U.S. deputy attorney general James Cole in 2013 that recommended federal prosecutors leave marijuana operations alone in states where the drug is legal. However, this is a guidance and not a law—and Trump can rescind it just like he did with guidelines to schools and educators regarding the treatment of transgender students.

In the 2013 marijuana guidelines, Cole specifically states that “the illegal distribution and sale of marijuana is a serious crime that provides a significant source of revenue to large-scale criminal enterprises, gangs, and cartels.” So…wouldn’t legalizing marijuana do the opposite? Experts think so.

Sessions' claims about marijuana don't hold up, experts say.

Morgan Fox, communications manager of the Marijuana Policy Project, tells SELF that Sessions' comments on marijuana and violence are "demonstrably false or illogical." "THC is not significantly higher in most samples of marijuana than it was a few years ago—perhaps more than it was 20 years ago—but the fact remains that THC levels are irrelevant when it comes to violence," he says. "Marijuana does not directly lead to aggression in users, as has been shown in multiple studies."

Tom Angell, founder of marijuana reform organization Marijuana Majority, tells SELF that the recent comments from the Trump administration regarding marijuana use are “concerning,” adding, “these alternative facts aren’t supported by scientific research or reality.” Taylor West, deputy director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, agrees, telling SELF that Sessions’ comments are “wrong—that’s probably the most important thing.”

The only connection that exists between marijuana and violence is the violence that occurs in the illegal marijuana market when unregulated sellers battle it out to protect their profits, West says. But, Angell points out, when marijuana is legalized, disputes can be settled in court. “Keeping it illegal and pushing it underground is the only way that it’s linked to violence,” he says.

Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML, a nonprofit lobbying organization working to legalize marijuana, tells SELF that Sessions’ comments are “based on ideology, not evidence, and are readily refuted by even a cursory review of the available data.”

So, about that data.

A 2012 study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found that the increase of medical cannabis dispensaries wasn’t linked with any discernible increase in violent crime or property crime. Another study published in the journal PLoS One in 2014 actually linked the legalization of medical marijuana with a decrease in certain violent crimes, like homicide and assault. Research has also found that legalizing marijuana would hurt Mexican drug cartels.

“Policies around marijuana really don’t fit with what we know from the science,” Sarah Wakeman, M.D., medical director for substance use disorders at the Massachusetts Center for Community Health, tells SELF, noting that alcohol is a legal drug that has been linked to an increase in violence. Wakeman says people should be more concerned about young people being exposed to high levels of THC, the chemical responsible for most of marijuana’s high, because of the potential effects it can have on a maturing brain.

However, she says, the status quo isn’t helping. “Nothing currently suggests that the criminalization of marijuana protects young people,” she says. “If people buy it from a drug dealer, they have no way of knowing what the THC content is.”

Angell says he’s not sure where Sessions is getting his information from. “If he has research indicating that using marijuana makes people more violent, I’d love to see that,” he says. “In my 15 years of working on this issue, I’ve never come across any evidence to that effect.” West agrees, saying that marijuana is “absolutely not” a gateway to violence.

Not only is legal weed not tied to violent crime, it's also definitely not linked to the opioid crisis.

Instead, prescription painkillers are "a driving factor in the 15-year increase in opioid overdose deaths," says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which cites the startling fact that since 1999, the number of prescription opioids sold in the U.S. has almost quadrupled. So has the number of deaths from prescription opioid overdoses.

Even more tellingly, as October 2014 research in JAMA Internal Medicine found, "medical cannabis laws are associated with significantly lower state-level opioid overdose mortality rates."

Beyond Sessions’ claims of increased violence if marijuana is legalized being incorrect, the majority of the country is in favor of the drug’s legalization.

A Gallup poll published in October found that 60 percent of the American public backs legalizing marijuana—and support is up across all age groups. “The voters, the majority of whom endorse regulating the adult use of marijuana, deserve better,” Armentano says.

Angell says the Trump administration should focus their efforts elsewhere. “This is a fight that they don’t want to pick because, frankly, we are way more popular with voters than they are,” he says.