When it comes to marijuana, medical is good, recreational is bad, according to White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. At the Green Man Cannabis store in Denver, the difference is no wider than the space between cash registers.

“The markets here are nearly indistinguishable,” said Christian Hageseth, Green Man’s chief executive officer, referring to Colorado. “There are a few people who are either just selling into the recreational market or a few selling medically, but most of us are selling both.”

If adopted, the distinction between medical and recreational cannabis, which Spicer made last week, could become a headache for regulators and a killer for businesses. Criminalizing the recreational market, legal in eight states and Washington, D.C., would mean the loss of about $33 billion over the next five years without accounting for possible gains in medical use, according to Bloomberg calculations based on Arcview Market Research data. In Colorado, with more than 25,000 people directly employed in the cannabis industry, making recreational pot illegal could cut jobs by as many as 18,000, Hageseth said.

‘Deep Misunderstanding’

“Mr. Spicer’s comments really signaled a deep misunderstanding within the administration about how marijuana policy is regulated and implemented at the state level,” said John Hudak, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution. “There are dramatic regulatory differences from state to state. The comments from the podium were overly simplistic.”

President Donald Trump separated medical from recreational marijuana during his campaign. He said he was “100 percent” in favor of the former, while calling the latter a “bad” experiment. Regardless, he said, it should be decided by the states.

Cannabis is legal for both recreational and medical use in California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maine, Alaska, and Washington, D.C., and approved in 20 additional states for medical purposes only, but marijuana is not legal for any purpose under federal law. And while Spicer’s comments -- and Trump’s campaign comments -- seem to show that the administration was open to medicinal marijuana, Attorney General Jeff Sessions may have different ideas.

Sessions, who has the power to crack down on the marijuana industry, indicated to a conference of attorneys general in Washington on Tuesday that he’d do away with the Obama administration’s hands-off strategy on state legislation. Law-enforcement officers need to address growing illegal drug use, including heroin and marijuana, and the arguments that pot helps cure opiate abuse or has other medicinal properties are “desperate,” he said.

“Give me a break,” Sessions said. “I doubt that’s true. Maybe science will prove I’m wrong.”

Cannabis has therapeutic effects to treat chronic pain, muscle spasms related to multiple sclerosis, and nausea from chemotherapy, according by a Jan. 12 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that reviewed 10,000 scientific abstracts since 1999. The study also found potential respiratory and mental health risks.

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