Gentlemen, in your reading and understanding of the Constitution, do you think authority is delegated to fedgov to regulate vice under the Commerce Clause? Or do you think the states retained this authority under the Tenth Amendment?
You leave out of this argument something that in recent years has vexed conservatives, and that is judicial activism, such as with Roe v. Wade.
You see, the sad part about this is that it doesn’t matter how rational the law or what the Constitution actually says. It matters how case law is interpreted in the end. With that, the stupid Commerce Clause trumps all. Even growing the tiniest part of an illegal substance has been ruled by the Supreme Court to be affecting interstate commerce, even if it was never bought or sold. It is bogus, I agree, but it is the reality of our lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
I would ask you by what authority the welfare state was started, and I can tell you that on that count, again it was the Supreme Court, after FDR announced his Supreme Court packing plan, that made the Court flip over and accept all such grotesque programs on behalf of the country.
On paper, the States should decide, but in real life, the Federal Government has been given the right to govern on drug policies. Conservative justices were against this, but prior case law, coupled with a majority of liberals on the Court, screwed it up since even before the New Deal days.
As a result, this fight occurs at the federal level and the States are largely impotent until the Supreme Court undoes its evil deeds.