Medical marijuana can be used to treat many symptoms of cancer and traditional cancer treatments. Farmacy offers a wide range of products embraced by people struggling with cancer, but we’re doing even more than that to help the medical world better understand and cure this awful disease.

Since opening in 2015, Farmacy has donated the fees collected from our ATM –$2 per transaction – to the BC Cancer Foundation. These funds, which in the past two years have amounted to almost $100,000, are directed to the immunotherapy research undertaken at the BC Cancer Agency’s Deeley Research Centre. There, medical professionals and researchers are working hard to better understand how the body’s immune system reacts to cancerous cells, and how this reaction can be tailored to prevent and treat the disease.

Farmacy’s donations are going toward the purchase of a PET/CT Imaging machine, which will be installed at the BC Cancer Agency Vancouver Island Centre, here in the city. Currently, there is not a single publicly funded scanner on Vancouver Island; patients diagnosed with cancer must travel to the mainland, where the two scanners at Vancouver’s BC Cancer Agency are consistently overbooked.

A scanner for the Island means people living in the region will have faster, more convenient access to a machine that can make a huge difference in a patient’s life: the PET/CT scanner can diagnose and help physicians make treatment plans, determine how effective an existing treatment has been, and identify whether the cancer is retreating, or spreading. The machines have proven especially promising in the treatment of melanoma (skin cancer), and leukemia in children.

Five million dollars are needed to purchase the scanner, and thanks to donations from Farmacy and other generous businesses like Thrifty’s Foods, Proline Property Management, and April’s TC 10K Walk/Run, the Foundation is more than halfway to their goal.

Here at our cannabis dispensary we’re so grateful to our members, without whom we would be unable to assist in this important cause. If you want to help support cancer research and treatment on Vancouver Island, while also treating your own symptoms or condition with all-natural cannabis, simply come by the shop!