Since the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1913, the federal government’s authority to regulate illicit drugs had mostly been limited to the power to tax them. But in 1969 the Supreme Court struck down the Marijuana Tax Act in a case involving the counterculture icon Timothy Leary. Dodd’s bill took a new strategy. Instead of trying to prohibit illicit drugs by taxing them, Dodd’s bill gave the Justice Department a wide range of new powers to directly enforce federal drug prohibition under the authority of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.
