"A principled stand on the limits of federal power does not begin and end with health care."

In a sharp piece for National Review Online, the Cato Institute's David Rittgers reminds conservatives that the war on drugs is a mirror image of ObamaCare's overreaching and abusive federal power:

Many conservatives have long argued that the federal government is broadly empowered to prosecute the drug war under Congress's authority over interstate commerce. In the name of the drug war, they have been willing to allow federal law-enforcement officers to prosecute seriously ill patients who use medical marijuana in compliance with their states' laws.

Many of those same conservatives are now finding that the terrible, swift sword of expansive federal power that they endorsed in the name of drug prohibition has now been turned on them in the form of Obamacare's individual mandate….

A principled stand on the limits of federal power does not begin and end with health care. The Commerce Clause is a double-edged sword: Conservatives cannot wield it in the drug war without making it a useful tool for advancing progressive visions of federal power.

Read the whole thing here.