A Conservative Supreme Court: A Step Forward for Medical Marijuana?

With Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito both beginning their lifelong appointments to the Supreme Court, liberals and left-leaning moderates throughout the country are rushing to prepare their Canadian citizenship applications. However justified liberals' fear may be, there is at least one silver lining to an overtly conservative court: it may just be a step forward for the medical marijuana movement, an issue that has really only taken ground in blue states. 

Perhaps this may be a pipe-dream (excuse the pun), but let me explain. Conservative jurists tend to value states' rights and generally disagree with the overuse of the Commerce Clause, which is the part of the Constitution that gives Congress the broad power to make federal regulations. The Commerce Clause allows Congress to regulate virtually anything in the United States that affects inter-state, commercial activity. In 1970, Congress used this authority to pass the Controlled Substance Act and it placed marijuana into the most prohibitive classification, Schedule One. Schedule One basically states that the substance has no medical value and is unacceptably dangerous and addictive (though cocaine and PCP are both Schedule Two drugs because they have certain medical applications). Until this law is changed, the federal government will not recognize medical marijuana, even in states like California that have passed laws in favor of it. In fact, federal agents regularly arrest terminally ill patients who reside in such states, a policy that famously contributed to the death of writer Peter McWilliams in 2000.