WINTER GARDEN, Fla. — A Central Florida family is one of the first to receive medical marijuana from Knox Medical in Winter Garden.
Knox Medical was approved to grow and dispense a form of the drug that is already legal in Florida called Charlotte’s Web.
Many families have been waiting for the Charlotte’s Web to be available for years.
On Friday morning, a truck delivered the medicine for the first time.
“I just knew in my heart that it would help my son,” said Connie, whose 25-year-old son, Matthew, suffers from Crohn’s disease.
The family asked not to be identified by their last names.
The disease caused Matthew to lose a significant amount of weight. He also deals with severe stomach spasms, bone pain, headaches and dehydration.
Connie said eating is difficult for Matthew because just a few bites of food go right through him, keeping him from leaving the house as much as he would like.
“He’s been to over 71 doctors in the last few years and taken over 150 medications. We didn’t know what else to do,” Connie said.
They decided to experiment with medical marijuana with one dose before a meal and a second dose after.
“He called me and he said, ‘Mom, I was actually able to keep the food in my system for 45 minutes to an hour.’ And that hadn’t happened in years. It was amazing,” she said. “I just wanted to cry.”
It also made his stomach spasms stop.
So when Amendment 2, which legalizes medical marijuana in Florida, passed and Knox Medical got the green light to sell cannabis to patients such as Matthew, he made the first order.
“So many days I get texts that just say, ‘Mom it’s not a good day.’ So the day I get the text that says, ‘I’m OK.’ I know that he’s having a better day," Connie said.
Matthew hopes when people see what medical marijuana is doing for people like him, it’ll end the stigma of marijuana being solely a street drug.