Having been on the Hillsdale College Imprimis mailing list since about 1980, and having been involved with fighting the main thing used to justify growing government power the so called war on drugs, I have long been dismayed with Hillsdale's disregard of freedom of medicine and diet.
Prejudice against Cannabis (Marijuana) had its streak throughout Hillsdale. The Dean of Men at Hillsdale was a kindly man with who we were quite friendly having been invited to his house with a few other students to watch the election results in 1980 when Ronald Wilson Reagan was elected President, as well as 4 years later to watch the same for Reagan's re-election. Yet even he embodied this prejudice against Cannabis, as did the Coach, another man I remember as kindly, yet was very anti Cannabis just as if raised (brain-washed) by the lame-stream media.
Initially I shared it to a degree, having seen a dorm-mate who smoked it upon waking up and subsequently had either a D or C- average and left school. But several years later had seen other dorm mates who only smoked later in the day or only in the evening who had B+ and A- averages, so as I came to see it was not Cannabis per se, but rather too early in the day. By 1983 I took my first toke and stepped into the community of Cannabis consumers.
I ran into the coach at a 2011 Hillsdale event in Stamford Connecticut, who told me that "they need to go after all the people who smoke Marijuana" as he breathed through plastic tubes connected to a breathing apparatus, confessing to me that he had been a regular smoker of cigarettes and had quit 25 years ago, as I confessed to being a near daily smoker of Cannabis for about that same time, and that my lungs were fine, and that we are all human beings and the war on drugs a war on people with differing ideas.
The gentleman representing Hillsdale at the 2011 Connecticut event, retorted that the war on drugs was a "moral" issue and that governments have the right or rather power to legislate morality- to which I retorted "market distortion-perversion protecting the most intrinsically dangerous agricultural stimulant from the safest resulting on some 100 million deaths owing to the driving concern behind the drug war beneath the veneer of racism mentioned by most historians who ignore the real underlying reason: economics as the USDA mainly feared Coca as a "Tobacco Habit Cure".
It is ridiculous that Hillsdale's Imprimis lecture series has never devoted any attention to that which has been used the most to justify growing government in so many ways, the so called war on drugs.
Hillsdale's Omission
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/05/hillsdales-omission.html
Hillsdale- What 30 Years War?
http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2007/06/hillsdale-college-what-30-years-war.html
A google search of the Hillsdale Imprimis site only shows references to illegal drugs with a reverence of the U.S. Congress that belies their reputation as being pro liberty, pro Constitution nor God, instead following the dictates of Woodrow Wilson and FDR.
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