Still prompted by “It is clear we would all be better off if Jonathan P. Caulkins did not exist.”: http://www.drugwarrant.com/2016/01/it-is-clear-we-would-all-be-better-off-if-jonathan-p-caulkins-did-not-exist
NCN replied to my comment with more details about Commerce Clause related rulings…
Wickard v. Filburn in the early 1940’s is the basis of the Controlled Substances Act.
A chicken farmer during WWII wanted to grow wheat to feed his chickens. The court said if everybody did it, it would interfere with interstate commerce.
A chicken farmer in WWII growing wheat to feed his chickens is the reason why people can be put in prison for life for their involvement with cannabis. Makes sense to me.
Same B.S. was used in (April) Raich v. Gonzales.
For the uninitiated, the case of Gonzales v. Raich is the medical cannabis case where our Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Cannabis Prohibition via the Commerce Clause.
Here’s my reply…
I am an honest freak (or reasonably responsibly balanced "misfit", if you prefer) of an artist working and resting to best carefully contribute towards helping society. Too many people abuse reasoning (e.g. 'partial truth = whole truth' scam), while I exercise reason to explore and express whole truth without any conflict-of-interest -- all within a sometimes offbeat style of psychedelic artistry.
Spirit Wave Journal 
It’s all part of the Living Constitution that’s amenable actually via vagueness and legal precedence to bypass the need for a constitutional amendment.
That’s the truest problem of this issue, because the integrity of our Constitution to protect “We the people” from abusive law (obviously why our Constitution exists, at least according to prominent American history and common sense) has been muddied by self-interests for over two centuries to excessive weakness.
The result is severely abusive law (e.g. Certain Drug Prohibition) — too much of it bypassing the judicially disarmed amendment nine logically judicially recognizing our fundamental rights (e.g. the unalienable right to liberty, which logically only means the right is limited by the right itself, so cannot be infringed upon by the too-often easily manipulated public, nor our “public servants”).
Wickard v. Filburn is not the ultimate base of this judicial “reasoning”.
From the Wikipedia entry for “The switch in time that saved nine”…
“Through the 1935–36 terms, Roberts had been the deciding vote in several 5–4 decisions invalidating New Deal legislation, casting his vote with the ‘conservative’ bloc of the bench, the so-called ‘Four Horsemen’.[4] This ‘conservative’ wing of the bench is viewed to have been in opposition to the ‘liberal Three Musketeers’.[5] Justice Roberts and Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the remaining two justices, were the center swing votes.”
“Roosevelt also believed that because of the overwhelming support that had been shown for the New Deal in his re-election, Hughes was able to persuade Roberts to no longer base his votes on his own political beliefs and side with him during future votes on New Deal related policies.[18] In one of his notes from 1936, Hughes wrote that Roosevelt’s re-election forced the court to depart from ‘its fortress in public opinion.’”
“The ruling also marked the end of the Lochner era, a forty-year period in which the Supreme Court often struck down legislation that regulated business activity.”
We obviously could go crazy focusing further upon the ultimate base into (and earlier than) the Lochner era, but the point is sound.
Abusive leadership has bypassed any concrete limits against oligarchical power and asserted itself in wild subjectivity (based often, if not always, upon dominating politics, so not necessarily justice) involving constitutional interpretation.
The tumultuous bid for power in the oligarchy usually shapes law — public safety too often merely a guise leveraged to strengthen that selfish bid.
Our fundamental rights have no true leverage, which can only be described as a broad and deep act of treason (by pre-American conservatives across the political spectrum) spanning our nation’s entire duration with supportive momentum ripping our society apart due to wild subjectivity (complex political pressures shaking our rule-of-law at serious national risk).
Political momentum instead defines liberty for each of us.
In other words, you don’t have an unalienable right to liberty — despite that truth to be held self-evident.
You’re only free to do whatever the oligarchy allows you to do (as too often defined by their desire to maintain power against public safety — e.g. Certain Drug Prohibition).
The current solution is political momentum to define liberty (e.g. dominating political leftism towards complexly regulating cannabis legality).
If anyone reading this is happy with that, then so be it (you’re obviously entitled to your opinion).
However, I understand the logical and critical need to prevent abusive law upfront to preserve judicial and societal integrity, so I leverage this serious issue involving certain drugs to reveal the demonstration of the undeniable horrors of that abuse (millions of non-violent lives ruined to varying degrees for several decades and counting).
My solution is scientific constitutionalism (bringing the scientific method to form objective language for objective — i.e. fair, so just — law), as fundamentally and even fairly complexly defined in project Liberty Shield.