[robertpaulsen]

"So Oregon can permit assisted suicide, and it can permit these drugs in other (approved - rp) applications, but it can't permit these drugs to be used for assisted suicide."

Correct.

"But the feds aren't prohibiting assisted suicide, because you said they can't do that. They are merely prohibiting an unintended and unapproved use of a drug, and that use just happens to be assisted suicide, but it's not the assisted suicide that's being prohibited, it's exactly HOW they are assisting suicide that's being prohibited."

Correct.

"And if they don't assist suicide just right, interstate commerce will be impeded, so this is not just the business of the state of Oregon, but it's a federal matter."

Using controlled substances in a manner for which they are not approved affect the safety and welfare of citizens. It would be both necessary and proper for Congress to legislate this activity if they so chose.

[publiusF27]

So anything that affects safety and welfare thereby affects interstate commerce, and can fall within the wide net of the commerce clause. That's why we've had commerce clause laws and cases about whether growing your own wheat is interstate commerce, whether being near a school with a gun is interstate commerce, whether rape is interstate commerce, whether partial birth abortion is interstate commerce, whether designing and building your own machine gun is interstate commerce, whether growing your own cannabis is interstate commerce, whether a certain California toad is interstate commerce, and on and on.

Few and defined powers, as Mr. Madison promised?

Well, one of them certainly seems to be the Swiss Army Knife of federal powers, giving Congress control over anything that Congress says affects interstate commerce. As O'Connor noted, the Court reduced Lopez to a drafting guide and gives the federal government control over, as you said, the safety and welfare of the citizenry.

Hey, isn't safety and welfare of the citizenry another way of saying the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State?