2025 West Virginia Legislative Priorities

2025 West Virginia Legislative Priorities

Victory in the fight against cancer requires bold new public policies that promote cancer prevention, early detection of cancer, and expand access to quality, affordable health care. Lawmakers make many decisions that impact the lives of West Virginia residents impacted by cancer and their leadership is vital to defeating this disease. In 2025 the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) will work with the administration of new Governor Patrick Morrisey, and West Virginia lawmakers to enact prevention policies to protect kids from tobacco products and help support those who are trying to quit, advance legislative and regulatory efforts that provide affordable, adequate access to health insurance including Medicaid, and ensure adequate funding for lifesaving cancer screening and prevention programs. We will be making the following fact-based policies a priority and ask for your support:

Reducing the Toll of Tobacco

• Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Funding: ACS CAN recommends directing the full JUUL settlement to the state’s tobacco control program to ensure settlement funds address the lasting impact of the e-cigarette epidemic. Specifying all of these dollars for fact-based tobacco control programs in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Best Practices for Comprehensive Tobacco Control Programs (2014) is critical to keep more West Virginia kids from becoming addicted to tobacco. It is more urgent than ever to keep kids from starting to use tobacco and help people quit.  ACS CAN CAN will work to increase funding for fact-based tobacco prevention and cessation programs to $4.5 million as an initial step toward ultimately funding the prevention and cessation program at $16.5 million. The investment is essential to keep West Virginia’s teenagers from growing into adults addicted to deadly tobacco products, provide vital resources to help adults who want to quit smoking, and save hundreds of millions of dollars in averted healthcare and business costs associated with treating diseases caused by tobacco products.
• Access to Tobacco Cessation: ACS CAN will advocate for all insurance plans, including Medicaid, to provide a comprehensive cessation benefit that covers individual, group, and telephone counseling and all FDA-approved cessation medications without cost-sharing or other barriers to access.
• Tobacco Taxes: ACS CAN will advocate to increase the cigarette tax by $1.50 per pack with a parallel tax on all other tobacco products including e-cigarettes. Increasing the price of cigarettes and all other tobacco products through regular and significant tobacco tax increases helps prevent kids from starting to use tobacco and helps support people who are trying to quit.  A portion of the revenue from a tobacco tax increase should be used to fund and sustain fact-based, statewide tobacco prevention and cessation programs.
• Smoke-free Air: ACS CAN advocates for everyone’s right to breathe clean smoke-free air in workplaces including restaurants, bars, and gaming facilities. ACS CAN will work to defend existing smoke-free laws against any exemptions. 

Cancer Prevention and Early Detection

• Breast and Cervical Cancer: ACS CAN will advocate to maintain funding for the breast and cervical cancer screening program for low-income, uninsured, and underinsured women administered by the state.
• Prostate Cancer: ACS CAN supports improving prostate screening rates and reducing disparities by advocating for appropriate screening measures. This includes policies that would give men at high-risk for prostate cancer improved access to prostate cancer screening without cost sharing.

Local Control

• ACS CAN supports the authority of local governments to pass local policies that go beyond state laws to help families be healthy, safe, and secure. Policymaking at the local level allows innovation and creative problem solving that builds on local strengths and addresses local needs. ACS CAN works at the local, state, and federal levels to ensure everyone has a fair and just opportunity to prevent, fight and survive cancer. ACS CAN will oppose legislation that restricts the freedom of local leaders to best serve your shared constituents. 

For more information, contact: Doug Hogan, ACS CAN West Virginia Government Relations Director  

[email protected]; Phone 502.545.6299  

ACS CAN is making cancer a top priority for public officials and candidates at the federal, state, and local levels. ACS CAN empowers advocates across the country to make their voices heard and influence evidence-based public policy change as well as legislative and regulatory solutions that will reduce the cancer burden. As the American Cancer Society’s nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy affiliate, ACS CAN is critical to the fight for a world without cancer. For more information, please visit www.fightcancer.org.