I'm not a federalism maven; though I've followed the Court's jurisprudence here, I can't claim deep expertise. Also, all four opinions in today's case strike me as thoughtful and plausible, so please read my criticisms of specific details of some opinions with an eye towards that.

This having been said, let me note a small item: Justice Thomas, dissenting, writes that "[U]nder the [Controlled Substances Act], certain drugs that present a high risk of abuse and addiction but that nevertheless have an accepted medical use -- drugs like morphine and amphetamines -- are available by prescription. No one argues that permitting use of these drugs under medical supervision has undermined the [Act's] restrictions."

Can that possibly be right? I had thought that prescription narcotics often do make their way into the illegal market, because the doctors or the patients break the law in ways that are made easier by the availability of prescriptions. Sure, Congress is willing to run that risk, but despite the fact that the availability of prescriptions has undermined the broad prohibitory goals of the Act.

Naturally, people may disagree about the degree to which the availability of morphine and amphetamines by prescriptions facilitates the broader illegal traffic. But I would imagine that this would be true to some degree, and that there's no reason to think that it's a tiny degree.