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I don’t see anywhere in the constitution that grants the fed the right to criminalize pot...

I don’t know when or how it happened but it was in the 20th century. It took a Constitutional Amendment to outlaw alcohol so at least in 1917 it was recognized that Congress and the Federal government didn’t have the right to outlaw things.

Marijuana (or marihuana as it was spelled then) was ‘outlawed’ in 1937. But it wasn’t really outlawed, Congress used its power to tax it—and then refused to sell the tax stamps required to legally possess it. They sort of did the same thing with ‘silencers’, sawed-off shotguns, machine guns, sub machine guns and other weapons by imposing a very high (for the time) tax of $200 per item.

But by the 1970s Congress somehow had the power to outlaw things outright. Someone with more knowledge than I might want to trace how and when Congress and the Federal government acquired this power.

Before the liberal reading of the commerce clause congress could only ban the sale of things across state lines (which is why even today many microbreweries can only sell instate) which is why the 18th amendment was needed.