Well, the Supreme court decided Raich today. Or, as the AP wire story so aptly puts it, “Court Rules Against Pot for Sick People.”
It’s bad enough that this is a giant “Fuck You!” to sick people, as Reason‘s Nick Gillespie puts it. Sometimes, however, the Supreme Court has to reach conclusions that cause trouble in the short term but that uphold valuable principles. This isn’t one of those times.
The Supremes seem to have almost completely abandoned the concept of limited government, allowing the feds to reach virtually any human activity through the Commerce Clause that gives the feds control over interstate trade. Stevens’s opinion basically says that Congrees can regulate intrastate activities that affect interstate trade, even if the intrastate activities do not involve trade, as long as the intrastate activities are economic in nature. Stevens defines economic as “the production, distribution, and consumption of commodities.”
That’s actually a reasonable definition of economic. What I fail to understand, however, is how regulation of interstate trade has expanded to include regulation of anything that affects the economic variables of interstate trade. At this point, the Supreme Court rulings seem to allow the federal government to regulate damned near every human economic activity, from liquor store hours to church bake sales.
I’m so upset by this. I’m so angry.
I’m straying a bit from the Commerce Clause issue, but I’ll leave you now with a few words from Justice Clarance Thomas’s dissenting opinion (as quoted by Orin Kerr):
[N]either in enacting the [Controlled Substances Act] nor in defending its application to respondents has the Government offered any obvious reason why banning medical marijuana use is necessary to stem the tide of interstate drug trafficking. Congress’s goal of curtailing the interstate drug trade would not plainly be thwarted if it could not apply the CSA to patients like Monson and Raich. That is, unless Congress’s aim is really to exercise police power of the sort reserved to the States in order to eliminate even the intrastate possession and use of marijuana.
Update: Jacob Sullum at Reason says it better.
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