One perverse result of the medical marijuana case: In eviscerating any meaningful check on Congress' power to intrude on the most noncommercial and private of individual activities under the guise of "regulating interstate commerce," the court undermines the avowed principal goal of the federal drug control legislation it cites. The court says the goal of the 1970 Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, as applied to marijuana, is to prohibit and eliminate interstate commerce in marijuana. But by ruling that the act properly prohibits purely private, noncommercial cultivation and personal use of small quantities of marijuana for medical purposes, in compliance with state law and under the recommendation of a doctor, the Supreme Court in effect sends those sick patients into the illicit market. The more patients in the illicit market, the more aggregate demand, the higher the prices, the higher the profits, and the more supply is needed.

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