Did the Founding Fathers intend that the states be allowed to undermine and subvert Congressional regulatory efforts? If so, then why give Congress that power?
It's one thing to say that Congress shouldn't be regulating drugs -- that the matter is best left to the states. That's a valid argument.
It's a totally different argument to say that Congress cannot regulate drugs. That's the argument made by people who wish the courts to do for them what the majority of citizens do not.
"In your opinion, if it were acknowleged that the wholly intrastate activities of a state (or states) had a substantial negative effect on Congress' constitutional interstate regulatory efforts, what then? (Don't think drugs -- think airline routes, TV and radio frequencies, national standards, tainted food products, etc.)."
If the wholly intrastate activities of a state reached beyond the state and had an effect on interstate commerce, Congress would be within its rights to regulate that. An airline route running only intrastate or tainted food not being shipped out of state are not appropriate areas for federal regulation. If a TV station or radio station were broadcasting such that the frequency could be picked up in another state, then that probably would be appropriate.
Laws like these are not black and white; there is a lot of grey area. The grey area is what fuels the expansion of our government into an ever bigger list of rules and regulations. It's incremental, it's bad, but it's hard to know what to do about it.
Southwest Airlines has already litigated the intrastate airline scenario and they won (way back in the early '70s when larger airlines tried to force them out of business using the power of the federal government). The ruling was that federal government had no power to regulate them when they were just flying to Houston, Dallas, and Austin.
If it's intrastate, then it's beyond the powers granted to the Congress by the Constitution.