The End of States Rights

[Pindar]

No, but I thought the 10th Ammendment was worth the paper it was written on...

Amendment X - Powers of the States and People. Ratified 12/15/1791. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

I don't remember the declaration of the War on Drugs, or the recognition of the Attorney General as it's primary protagonist anywhere in the rest of the document.

If you accept the Supremacy Clause Article VI of the Constitution:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land...

then, Amendment X does not apply as Federal law is stipulated as having final authority. The Clause lists three legal criteria: the Constitution, U.S. Treaties and Federal Law as trumping State law. The nature of this power was demonstrated in the 1824 Gibbons v. Ogden ruling:

''In argument, however, it has been contended, that if a law passed by a State, in the exercise of its acknowledged sovereignty, comes into conflict with a law passed by Congress in pursuance of the Constitution, they affect the subject, and each other, like equal opposing powers. But the framers of our Constitution foresaw this state of things, and provided for it, by declaring the supremacy not only of itself, but of the laws made in pursuance of it....In every such case, the act of Congress, or the treaty, is supreme; and the law of the State, though enacted in the exercise of powers not controverted, must yield to it.''

Thus, State laws cannot exceed their mandate and speak contrary Federal legislation. If a state passes law X and there is a Federal law -X, the Federal law holds sway and the other must bow before it.