Maine 2025 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 Mainers 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 Maine Legislature on legislative and regulatory efforts that provide affordable, adequate access to health insurance and enact prevention and cessation policies that help people who use tobacco products quit and deter kids from ever using tobacco products. We will be making the following fact-based policies a priority and ask for your support:  

Ensuring Access to Quality Care 

• Access to Biomarker Testing: ACS CAN will advocate for improved coverage of comprehensive biomarker testing. Progress in improving cancer outcomes increasingly involves the use of precision medicine, which uses information about a person’s own genes or proteins to prevent, diagnose or treat diseases like cancer. Biomarker testing is an important step to accessing precision medicine which includes targeted therapies that can lead to improved survivorship and better quality of life for cancer patients, but insurance coverage for biomarker testing is failing to keep pace with innovations and advancements in treatment.  

• Palliative Care: ACS CAN will work to improve cancer patients’ quality of life by supporting the Palliative Care and Quality of Life Advisory Council’s ongoing efforts to identify barriers to the availability of coordinated, supportive care during treatment from the beginning of diagnosis for serious diseases such as cancer.  

Reducing the Toll of Tobacco

• Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Funding: ACS CAN will work to protect funding for fact-based, statewide tobacco prevention and cessation programs at the amount recommended for the state by the US CDC.  The funding for this program comes largely from revenues from the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) payments, which go into the Fund for a Healthy Maine. The other source of state funding for this program is a portion of the revenue the state collects from excise taxes on non-cigarette tobacco products. 

• Tobacco Excise Tax: ACS CAN will advocate to increase the cigarette tax by $2.00 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. Revenue from the tobacco taxes should be used to fully fund and sustain fact-based, statewide tobacco prevention and cessation programs.

Cancer Control Funding  

• Comprehensive Cancer Control and Screening Program Funding: ACS CAN will work to protect appropriations for state comprehensive cancer control programs. ACS CAN will advocate to preserve funding for the Maine Breast and Cervical Health Program. This life-saving program provides breast and cervical cancer screenings to low-income women age 40 – 64 who are uninsured or underinsured.  

Local Control

• Preserving Local Control: Local governments are uniquely positioned to meet the needs of the people in their communities. ACS CAN supports their ability to pass laws that are proven to promote good health, well-being, and equality. Preserving local control is needed to pass innovative and proactive public health policies. ACS CAN works at the local, state, and federal levels; thus, it supports each level of government’s ability to implement policies for cleaner, safer, healthier communities. The right of local governments to pass public health policies stronger than state laws must be preserved to continue future advocacy efforts to reduce suffering and death from cancer. 

For more information, contact: Julia MacDonald, Maine Government Relations Director
[email protected] | 207.888.9826