Transcript

Century of Lies / June 9, 2013

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DEAN BECKER: No time for intros and outros. This is Century of Lies on the Drug Truth Network and Pacifica Radio.

Long time listeners to the Drug Truth Network may know the voice of our guest here. He’s the father of a young man who lost his battle with brain cancer but persevered for a couple of years through the use of medical cannabis.

With that I want to welcome Mike Hyde. How are you doing?

MIKE HYDE: Doing good. Thanks for having me.

DEAN BECKER: Mike, tell us the story of your son.

MIKE HYDE: Cashy was a beautiful little boy. When he right around 2-years-old he was diagnosed with a stage 4 brain tumor. We got thrown into the whole not “natural” but the natural order of the American Medical Association and the way that they approach cancer and the way that they approach pediatric cancer.

Along the journey around 2010 we kind of experienced this whole plethora of basically body toxication that they do at the hospital in the way that they address cancer. Cancer is an immune system deficiency and the only way that the American Cancer Association and all the oncology groups address cancer is by dumping chemo or radiation into your body which kills all your fast-growing cells.

Your fastest growing cells are your brain, your hair and your intestines. Your intestines literally hold everything. As you dump chemo into your body and kill it not only the cancer but the body it’s a very awakening experience especially when you’re on the sideline. As a parent wanting to take care of my kid as I started watching these medicines kill my kid and the nausea and pain drugs that they are given it really became apparent that what we were looking at.

I found out 47 kids are diagnosed with cancer each day and 7 will pass away. Over 1,500 Americans die every day from cancer which means we have a 9/11 every other day in America and our terrorist is cancer.

What I found is that 70% of these kids that are dying every day are dying of organ failure and drug overdose from the nausea and pain drugs that they are given. With cannabis oil not only is it one of the safest, most therapeutic medicines known to man it is a patented neuro-protector and anti-oxidant.

DEAN BECKER: The U.S. government has that.

MIKE HYDE: They have the patent on it from 2003. Basically if you are using conventional treatment and you’re destroying all the cells and you take cannabis oil for nausea and pain you’re going to protect your organs and your brain as good as you can while you’re destroying them and at the same time you can replace all the nausea and pain drugs that will destroy your organs and give you organ failure.

Right now in America we could step in and could save (I don’t even know the number) but we could save close to about 40 or 50% of the kids that die each day from the treatment by just getting them off of these deadly drugs.

That’s how we got thrown into this whole medical cannabis movement. We replaced Cashy in 2010 off of Aderan, Zophan, Phenidren, Benedryl, Morphine, Methadone, Oxycodone, Ketamine and Dilaudid. They were given to him every day, all day long one or the other. They just stagger it around. They call it the nausea and pain cocktail.

It is one of the most horrific things you can watch. At the time when we decided to give it to Cashy the doctor and I had a conversation and I asked him if there was anything they could do to make his quality of life any better. The doctor said, “Mike, you’re fighting stage 4 brain cancer. We’re using high-dose chemo, bone marrow transplants. This is as good as it will ever get and it’s probably going to get worse because we’re looking at organ failure at this point.

He hasn’t eaten in 40 days. He’s living solely off of a T panel of nutrition which destroys your liver. On top of that he’s getting all these different types of narcotics which are going to destroy his organs so really it’s not if we can do anything to make him any better but we worry that it’s going to get worse.”

That’s when I said, “I want you to start pulling him off this nausea and pain cocktail. I’ve looked at all the side effects from organ failure, respiratory failure, cardiovascular failure, hallucinations, depression, nausea. I think that you guys are making him sick with all these drugs.”

As they reluctantly started weaning him off all these narcotics I started sneaking in cannabis oil into his G tube and over a two week period we pulled him off of all the nausea and pain drugs. The hospital of Salt Lake City charted. I have all the records. They pulled him off the drugs.

They told me every day that they thought it was a miracle. They thought it was amazing. They were making him sick with all the nausea and pain drugs. They didn’t know that he was on the oil. They just thought that by taking him off of all these drugs made him better.

DEAN BECKER: We’re speaking with Mike Hyde, the father of Cash Hyde who lost his life last year to brain cancer.

MIKE HYDE: So after we got him off all the drugs and I’m looking around the hospital…you become a family with all the families on the oncology floor. You share the same parent room which is where you do laundry. You’re in there all throughout the day washing your kids clothes that they’re throwing up on, their stuffed animals, their blankets. You’re visiting with the parents.

You know what’s going on in all these rooms. You hear parents cry at night when they’re kids pass away. It’s very real. It’s very dramatic. So I’m sitting there thinking to myself that all these parents need to know about this. I’m afraid if I tell them that they’ll take the medicine from Cashy.

I had to keep my mouth shut. It really ate at me. I made this promise to myself that when we got Cashy home safe that I was going to tell the world. That way other parents would know that there was another option that wasn’t being looked at, that was a patented neuro-protectant, that was an anti-oxidant.

I felt like it was my duty to tell all these parents and let the word get out that there was something we could do other than just poison our kids. When I addressed Cashy’s cancer with cannabis oil I wasn’t even looking at as an anti-cancer. I was looking at it more as a nausea and pain.

As we came home from 2010 and in 2011 we told our story – 3 weeks after we told our story on the news http://nationalcancerinstitute.gov released a part of their site that was called “Cannabis cannabinoids PDQ”.

The nci.gov has a patient review and a physician review on their site on cannabis and cannabinoids. They will tell you the history, the review, the efficiency, why cannabis is safer than all the narcotics out there.

The portion of your brain stem that controls your respiratory and your cardiovascular system doesn’t have receptors on it so there’s no way of actually suppressing someone’s respiratory or cardiovascular system with cannabis oil and that’s why there’s no documented deaths with it.

As I learned that stuff and I was like, “Oh my God we can pull him off the nausea and pain and give him a neuro-protectant and antioxidant and an anti-inflammatory and an antidepressant and I can’t stop his heart.”

I had watched them stop his heart. In 2010 I watched them stop Cashy’s heart over 8 times at least when giving him Phentanol and Phenergan. There is nothing scarier than watching your kid ‘code’ and watching them resuscitate him. You’re standing there on the sideline and you just watched them literally cause it.

They just do it again and again until you look at them and say, “Stop putting that in my kid. You guys keep putting that in his body and his heart keeps stopping. How about you stop putting that in his body.”

As the National Institute built this website the normal screen shot…you can look up http://stash.norml.org/national-cancer-institute-scrubs-medical-marijua… and you can look at these screen shots of the website. In that section of the physician review not only does it say that cannabis oil or cannabinoids are a great for nausea and pain but actually said it can be used because of its anti-cancer effect.

7 days later the FDA stepped in and made them remove that and put that cannabis has not been approved by the FDA and only FDA-approved facilities can research it. That was a huge blow for me because cancer affected our family so much and these guys are coming out and saying, “Hey, this could possibly be a cure.”

You can’t come out and say that you possibly have a cure and then take it away and not give an explanation besides we don’t approve of it. When I saw that happen and at the same time in Montana we were up against a big battle with our state legislatures and our law enforcement because the federal government came in and said, “Hey, we’re going to start pulling your funding if you guys don’t start enforcing the Substance Abuse Act – state’s rights don’t rule.”

What they did is repeal our voter initiative and allowed the feds to come in and raid all the caregivers in Montana and actually take away our access. Within months of them doing that Cashy’s cancer came back. When his cancer came back the second time not only was there nowhere to go to get any oil and if you could find it it was very low. There wasn’t enough oil around to actually fight cancer the way that we had learned that could possibly be better than radiation.

So as we went into our battle in 2011 we were only able to acquire enough oil to keep him between the 200 and 400 milligram a day mark and over a 6 week period we were able to slow his tumor growth down by over 55% which is huge deal but at the same time we couldn’t get enough. The feds kept coming in and raiding everybody to the point where we had to leave Montana and go to California and start radiation. There was no more oil and the only thing left was radiation.

Watching radiation do its job was…with high-dose chemo it was a long-term treatment. It was 10 months. Radiation was an 8 week treatment. When we got done with radiation Cashy was in as poor of a state as when we got done with 10 months of chemo. The radiation just zaps you.

However when we got to California we met Ringo and he actually gave us a 90-day supply of oil that we were able to not let Cashy take any nausea or pain drugs the whole time he brain radiation. He was one of the first pediatric cancer patients to do full-body cranial, spinal radiation without any nausea or pain medication.

Every day we were out of the hospital – out patient. He went playing in the Ronald McDonald house because that’s where we stayed while all the other kids were stuck up on their floor heavily sedated with narcotics.

His quality of life was different than the first battle even though the treatment was so hard. Ultimately I feel radiation is what consumed Cashy. As we got into 2012 and we were entering remission it was a full-time job just trying to rebuild his body to try to get him back up to running speed.

Right as we got there his cancer came back a third time and that’s when we had to make a decision as a family, “Do we continue torturing Cashy with these medical treatments to keep him here another month or is it our responsibility as his caregivers to tap him out on that and not let him go back through all that again.”

It was a hard decision but the whole family made it and Cashy was part of that voice. He said he didn’t want any more pokes. He was very set on not going back to the hospital and we made him that promise.

He passed away at home in my arms. I felt like I gave him a gift that a lot of parents can’t give their kids. I felt like even at the end of the day if you’re going to make a choice on how you live and how you die then that’s the epitome of being a free human being on this earth.

I feel lucky to be a free human being at a time where so many people feel free but they follow all these laws that really have no hold on who we are as human beings.

DEAN BECKER: This is Mike Hyde, father of Cash Hyde, the 2-year-old who used medical cannabis to fight his brain cancer.

MIKE HYDE: It has been a strong battle for our family and we’re still in it. There are so many kids out there that are having to fight this fight. Kids can’t fight cancer alone. They are depending on the doctors and their parents to take care of them and make the right decisions.

What’s going on is doctors are dictating what they want you to do and they’re being told by the FDA on what they can tell you to do. There’s really no doctor-patient relationship. It is basically, “You will do this, this or this.” It’s basically, in pediatric care, if a parent doesn’t do what they tell them to do first they take all your kids away.

They take your kid away and they go and do what they want to do. It puts parents in a real dangerous spot especially when there is healthy kids involved where not only are you worried about your dying kid but you’re worrying about your healthy kids and keeping them safe and these guys are literally going to tear your whole family apart if you don’t follow what they’re telling you to do.

It’s time to stand up. Thomas Jefferson said, way back in the day, “If the people let the government dictate the foods that they eat and the medicines they take then soon their bodies will be in as poor of a state as those who live under tyranny.”

That rings so true today because of the FDA and it’s all there. It’s all there. I’m excited to be down here in Texas speaking with you guys, telling Cashy’s story. I feel it’s a story that needs to be told and people need to understand as we ask for medical cannabis we’re allowing our legislature to have a power that they don’t have.

We’re allowing them to practice medicine without a license. We’re allowing our doctors to not follow their hippocratic oath that they took to be our doctors. We’re allowing them to have powers that are unconstitutional and it’s time for everyone to stand up and say, “Hey guys, you don’t have the right to do this.”

Even with alcohol prohibition they amended the constitution to make alcohol illegal and then they amended it to make it re-legal. People need to understand that what they are using as an act is an act and act is something that can never be amended because it’s such a dirty law.

In Montana we have wolves. They are federally endangered. But Federal Judge Maloy said it’s perfectly legal to break state and federal law as long as you don’t break the Constitution of the United States of America.

But they say, “Hey, if you’ve got medical cannabis we’re going to kick your door down. If you have a firearm you’re going to prison for the rest of your life.”

They’re completely destroying our civil liberties.

DEAN BECKER: It’s so bogus. I’ll tell you what, Mike, I want to thank you for sharing Cashy’s story with us. I appreciate the pain and the courage you had to let him go. I thank you for your interview, sir.

Is there a website we can share with the listeners?

MIKE HYDE: http://cashhydefoundation.com you can google Cash Hyde and you’ll be able to read hundreds of stories. Just type in Cash Hyde on YouTube. All the articles are out there all the way down to his funeral.

Cashy was so much an inspiration to everybody so, as a family, we shared everything. It’s my job now to continue his legacy and ensure that Cashy’s name is not forgotten. Cashy is only one of many kids….you couldn’t even put a number on it. It’s horrific.

These kids have to battle this battle and there’s no cotton candy chemo. There’s no Sponge Bob radiation. It’s the real deal. The narcotics they are giving these kids are the same that you give an adult. They have a street value that’s heavy. They are very addictive drugs that they are giving these kids.

I don’t know the number on it. In the back of my mind I always think about it because doctors made comments to us in 2010. They said, “Cashy’s going to be able to party when he’s in college because he’s doing all these drugs.”

I looked at him like, “Wow, that’s something I don’t want to hear…that my kid could be a drug addict.”

That got my wheels turning about what’s the number of kids that live past the 5-year rate that are cancer free and what is their chances of becoming a drug addict as they going into adulthood because they are addicted to these opiods – methadones and morphines and all this stuff that they’re throwing these kids on. What is that number?

Not only are they trying to save their lives but we don’t want them to become drug addicts when they’re older and be hopped up on oxycontin and methadone. That’s no way for our kids to live.

People say, “Well you let your kid use cannabis.”

I’m like, “Your kids got McDonalds in his hand right now so I don’t think we can really have a conversation at this point.”

DEAN BECKER: Alright, Mike, I think that’s it. I appreciate it.

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DEAN BECKER: Well, he just finished giving a speech to a rousing ovation here at the DFW NORML gathering. I consider him to be one of my oldest friends in drug reform and the man who gave me the courage to do this show, to do thousands of radio shows. He is the author of “Our Drug Laws Have Failed: What we can do about it.”

Now retired, Superior Court Judge James P. Gray.

JIM GRAY: Dean, it’s a pleasure to be with you – always a pleasure.

DEAN BECKER: Thank you.

JIM GRAY: We’ve done this a few times and I have seen how much of an impact that you have had in this whole issue and I just really applaud all of your efforts. You speak the truth. You quote the government statistics which is all we really have to do. I really applaud what you are doing.

DEAN BECKER: Thank you, judge. You have now retired (at least from the bench) but you have not retired from your distaste for this drug war.

JIM GRAY: The biggest failed policy in the history of the United States of America is this policy of drug prohibition. It is the most patriotic thing I can do for the country that I love to help us change that.

We are well on our way. Now the votes in Colorado and the state of Washington to treat marijuana like alcohol, to regulate and control it. People are going to see that it works. I go around the country now and say, “How many of you think the federal government has all the answers?”

Well, nobody says that.

“Well, then, how many of you in New Hampshire or Montana (wherever I happen to be) think that you as adults are perfectly capable of figuring out the best addressing of marijuana issue? You can do that more than the federal government.”

They all agree that they can be able to do that. It’s called the concept of federalism. It’s what made America great – to allow each 50 crucibles of democracy (each state) to decide how we’re going to treat this issue.

Some of them will be really working well and those can be copied and there may be some really spectacular failures and those can be avoided. But, right now, what we’re doing is simply not working. Let’s let Texas or New Hampshire decide how best to do it. They will.

DEAN BECKER: I hear all these people talk about, “Oh, most of these medical patients don’t really deserve it.” Or whatever but the fact of the matter is you can go into any drugstore and buy pain medications that are more debilitating. The hypocrisy is neck deep, isn’t it?

JIM GRAY: The hypocrisy is rampant. You look at George W. Bush (he’s from Texas, of course) from my understanding he pretty much (without really saying so) but he pretty much acknowledged that he used cocaine when he was young and irresponsible and a playboy and the rest.

I would have asked him, “Mr. President, would it have helped your career to have been arrested?!”

In fact, he even signed legislation here in Texas mandating anyone who is convicted of using cocaine must go to jail a minimum of 180 days.

“Mr. President, would that have helped your career, your life to have done that?”

I’ve never used any illicit substance. I’m worried about my cholesterol for heaven’s sake but my drug of choice is alcohol. I pretty much drink alcohol every day. I’m responsible. I don’t drive after I’ve been drinking, etc. If I were to use any other drug I would be called an addict. “Use it every day?! Oh, my goodness, you need rehabilitation.”

I don’t. Most people who use these other drugs don’t need rehab either but if you do find people who need rehabilitation let’s talk about Portugal. You’re aware of this and most of our listeners should be but they’re not.

Portugal found out in the year 2000 they had the biggest drug problem of any country in the European union so they did something really smart – they put together a commission of non-political experts and had them go out into the country and find out what was going on and come back and report.

They came back and said two things. Number one is the people who are problem users will not bring their problems to the government. Why? Because they are afraid of their own government because if they do that they’ll get punished so they take them underground.

Number two, the government was spending so much money on the investigation, prosecution and incarceration of these people that they didn’t have any money left for drug treatment. So they reversed that.

2001Portugal decriminalized all drugs. What happened? Well, now we’ve seen after a lot of data that drug usage remains the same. By the way every Drug Czar we’ve ever had has said, “If we change our approach we’d become a nation of drug zombies.” Or something rather insulting like that. Didn’t happen in Portugal whatsoever but problem drug usage went down by 50%. Why? Because the commission was right.

Now if a police officer sees you and you are under the influence he’ll give you a citation but not to come to a judge like me but instead to a group of medical professionals and they’ll say, “Dean, what’s your drug usage? What are you doing? How can we help you?”

50% reduction in problem drug usage and something between 25 and 30% reduction for children starting to go down this path. Why? I was once a teenager – maybe you were, too. I know that mentality.

Why should I use drugs and go see a doctor? That’s no fun. It takes the glamor out of it. So this sort of thing works. It will work here, too.

DEAN BECKER: We’re speaking with my good friend, now-retired Superior Court Judge James P. Gray, at yesterday’s gather in Fort Worth of NORML.

In the U.S. we have many politicians that are beginning to speak up….i won’t say many…we have politicians beginning to speak up about the need to change. Behind closed doors many more politicians are willing to speak of this need for change. What’s going to give them the courage to speak publically?

JIM GRAY: We are. Politicians are really good at one thing and that is followership. They’ll follow where the votes are. As soon as they see that the voters are interested in change and now the PEW poll which you have seen says 52% of the high propensity voters support treating marijuana like alcohol so the voters will do it. The voters cannot be mistaken. It’s making all the difference.

The politicians have seen this for a long time. 1998 – back in my sorted past – I was a Republican running for congress and I sat one-on-one with two Republicans (sitting congressmen from Orange County) and I didn’t bring up the whole issue of drug policy at all because they knew my position. They brought it up themselves.

In their own words said, “Jim, you don’t understand. Most people in Washington (remember this is 1998) realize the War on Drugs is not winnable but it’s immenently fundable and they are addicted to the drug war funding.”

If you take that beyond and all of us should take a look at the budgets in the federal agencies. Each federal agency’s budget earmarks special monies to fight the War on Drugs – extra tens of millions of dollars.

It’s not just the big guys – the department of justice, obviously, and the department of military and department of state – but it’s the little guys, too. It’s the department of agriculture, the department of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Land Management – they all get tens of millions of dollars extra and they don’t want to give it up.

So don’t look to the federal government to change this it is going to be up to us. It is a question of money and it’s pretty discouraging stuff.

DEAN BECKER: I can’t stress enough your experience and your words empower people like me and many of the folks who shook your hand after your speech because the stature that you represent gives us courage, gives us motivation, gives us hope.

JIM GRAY: Thank you, Dean. We are who we are. People of every level…me, as a sitting judge and now retired judge, I’ve become kind of a clearing house where it’s amazing…my email is out there jimpgray@sbcglobal.net.

People will write to me and they’re heartbroken parents who, “My son is bipolar and he self-medicates and he was off these methamphetamines for a while and then he got a job and then they found him again and now he’s lost everything that he’s done and he’s back in prison for 4 years.” Or whatever…it just makes you weep.

You’ve got help change this. I believe in responsibility and, in fact, if I have a last message the criminal justice system is really, really good at holding people accountable for what they do but it’s not at all effective at trying to hold accountable for what people put in their bodies.

I’m, of course, a Libertarian and I say that it has no business controlling what we put into our bodies. Control our actions but, Dean, if you or I drive a motor vehicle after taking ( I don’t care) methamphetamines, marijuana, alcohol (my drug of choice) that’s a crime and should be – what’s the difference.

Now by my actions I’m putting your safety at risk. That’s a legitimate criminal function. If I hit you over the head with a pool cue it doesn’t matter whether I’ve been using alcohol or not – that’s a crime. I have a victim. I have a crime. That should be prosecuted but, otherwise, if I’m going to go home and drink 10 martinis at night – it’s not a violation of law nor should it be. Not healthy – stupid, in fact – but as long as all I’m doing is hurting myself that is not any of the government’s business.

That’s where we’ll go. Then we will look back together and think, “My goodness, how could we have gone so far astray?! How could we ever have gone into prohibition?!”

Just like with alcohol. I really wish that we’d never made alcohol prohibited in our country, wouldn’t have given the mafia that toe-hold, that body into the door. I can’t turn that around but at least they’re not selling alcohol anymore.

It’s the same thing with these other drugs. It’s really apparent. Once you turn on that little light it’ll never go off and if I can help just turn a few lights on (and I know that you are as well) it really feels good. Let’s get it done.

Thank you and good luck to us all.

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DEAN BECKER: Two gentlemen that I greatly admire - Mike Hyde for his courage with the death of his son, Cashy, and Judge Gray to stand up so boldly for decades as a sitting judge to declare the drug war an abject abysmal failure.

Somewhat similar to the regular close of Century of Lies - Prohibido istac evilesco!

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Transcript provided by: Jo-D Harrison of www.DrugSense.org