| Venue: | SCOTUS |
| Facts: | The plaintiffs are medical marijuana consumers-- one even grows her own. This is 100% legal under CA law, and they're treated by bona fide physicians. Until they get raided by the feds. |
| Posture: | Not clear. |
| Issue: | Does congress' power to regulate interstate drug trade encompass fully local transactions? |
| Holding: | Yes. |
| Rule: | When a general regulatory statute bears a substantial relation to commerce, the de minimis character of individual instances arising under that statute is of no consequence. |
| Reasoning: | The ability to regulate commerce implies the ability to regulate
non-commercial activities that would otherwise undercut the
regulation.
Here, we're trying to control the drug market. This includes both the supply and the demand for drugs. |
| Dicta: | There are other avenues of relief, such as lobbying to get the
drug reclassified.
O'Connor (dissenting): The states need to be able to have their own criminal laws, and to work as laboratories. To draw the line wherever private activity affects the demand for market goods is to draw no line at all, and to declare everything economic. Thomas (dissenting): There is a danger to concentrating too much, as well as too little, power in the Federal Government. |