By Steve Elliott
Hemp News
Michael Hyde, the father of child medical marijuana patient Cashy Hyde, who died of brain cancer last year, has filed to run for mayor of Missoula, Montana.
Hyde, 29, filed on Thursday, the last day to file for city races in Missoula. He has continued working as a medicinal cannabis activist through fundraising efforts with the Cash Hyde Foundation since the death of his son.
Hyde is taking on a popular incumbent, Mayor John Engren, who ran unopposed in 2009 and is now seeking a third time in office.
"Yeah, I'm the underdog," Hyde said. "But I love the story of the underdog."
Hyde last November objected to the way law enforcement responded to the death of his terminally ill four-year-old son Cash, reports Keila Szpaller of The Missoulian. The father's call to a social worker triggered the arrival of law enforcement; Hyde asked the officers to leave while the family mourned, but the police stayed to "follow protocol."
Five uniformed law enforcement officers "shut down my whole house and treated it like a murder scene, and I asked them kindly to leave several times and come back in the morning," Hyde said last November. "And they told us no."
The family had chosen a course of treatment for Cash's brain cancer that involved regimens of Rick Simpson Oil, a highly concentrated form of hash oil used by many cancer patients to battle tumors.