The Congress shall have Power...
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;"
It's not really a matter of living versus dead trees. The US judicial system has just plainly ignored the "among the several States" caveat for the last 100 years. I'm not advocating either side of this example, by how does growing and consuming marijuana on your own property fall under regulated commerce "among the several States?" I understand it was originally banned using taxation powers (i.e. charge a stamp tax on it, but don't sell the stamps), but that pretext seems to have now been dropped.
Without endorsement, as a result of reading the recent Virginia decision on the constitutionality of the health care purchase mandate (which I mention without endorsement of either side), it has been ruled by the Supreme Court in Wickard v. Filburn (1942) [1] that the US government can regulate the act of a farmer growing wheat to feed his own chickens on the grounds that had the farmer not grown that wheat, he would have then participated in the national wheat market that Congress could regulate, that his failure to purchase wheat on this market therefore affected the market by his absence, and thereby Congress can regulate his action in accordance with the Commerce Clause.
Again, I mention this without endorsement of either side; I mention this just because I only recently learned about this myself.
That kind of ruling just turns my stomach. The court used a an enumerated power--that was primarily intended to prevent tariffs being erected between the states--to effectively remove all limits to federal power. Gonzales v. Raich (2005)[1] is analogous to the Wickard v. Filburn case that you cite. In his dissent, Justice Thomas said the following:
If the Federal Government can regulate growing a half-dozen cannabis plants for personal
consumption (not because it is interstate commerce, but because it is inextricably bound up
with interstate commerce), then Congress' Article I powers -- as expanded by the Necessary
and Proper Clause -- have no meaningful limits. Whether Congress aims at the possession of
drugs, guns, or any number of other items, it may continue to "appropria[te] state police
powers under the guise of regulating commerce."
