Incumbent seeks re-election

The Senator of Cabell County will run for re-election in May for what could be his third term in the West Virginia Legislature.

"Every candidate will say, ‘I will go fight for Marshall,'" said Sen. Evan Jenkins, District 5.  "The question is, are they going to be effective in that fight? Starting from scratch would be a step back for the future of Marshall in particularly."

Jenkins said one can look around campus at Marshall University and feel that things are going well. He said he has worked very hard in representing the Marshall faculty, classified staff and students.

"My seniority in the Senate, along with Sen. Robert Plymale, has given this area two Senators that hold leadership posts and can put that power to good use to battle for our share of the limited resources," he said.

Jenkins was elected to the House 1994-1998 and then went to the Senate 2002-2010, according to the West Virginia Legislature Web site.

Jenkins is the chairman for Interstate Commerce and is vice chairman for Transportation and Infrastructure along with Banking and Insurance. For his day job he is the Director of the West Virginia Medical Association, which is to promote health improvement, he said.  

This year, Jenkins and his colleagues have made a lot of headway fighting the prescription medication problem the state is facing. One single bullet can not fix this problem and the legislature alone can't fix the problem but they have a role to play, he said.

"I took a comprehensive approach and offered a package of bills that are geared to tack the issues from different angles," Jenkins said. "We were extremely successful this year in passing five separate measures contained in four bills that will soon become laws to help fight the crisis"

One bill is to allow law enforcement and prosecutors to go after the doctor shoppers who go from doctor to doctor and fake complaints to receive opiate based prescriptions, he said.

The second is all pharmacists and physicians have to report when they dispense a controlled substance. This bill also requires that prescriptions be written on tamper proof paper, he said. 

Another bill will require all pharmacies in West Virginia, particularly national corporate businesses such as CVS and Rite Aid, to allow Internet access so they can use the West Virginia. control substances database to catch doctor shoppers.  Before corporate pharmacies did not allow Internet access to keep employees from surfing the Web, he said.

"If they want to put filters on the computers to only allow them to access the database Web site, so be it," Jenkins said. " You can't just say no access anymore. The importance of giving pharmacies this tool outweighs the national corporate policy of no Internet access."

With budget cutbacks the past couple of years, Marshall has been getting less money from the state, he said.

"When Marshall gets less money from the state that puts more pressure on students' tuition, so we are hoping to stem the tide of tuition increases by helping at a state level," Jenkins said.

Jenkins knew he wanted to be a politician when he was getting his undergraduate degree at the University of Florida in business marketing and was encouraged to run for student government by another member of the council, he said.

"I stood out and passed out leaflets in the Commons area," Jenkins said. "I was out asking for peoples votes, and won. It rounded out my college experience."

After Jenkins graduated he came to Marshall for its MBA program. He left Marshall's MBA program and went to Cumberland School of Law, he said. He came back to Huntington to start practicing law after he finished.

Around the time he moved back, Marshall was looking for a part-time instructor for business law. Jenkins took the position for a couple years in the late 80's and said he had a lot of fun.

Tess Moore can be contacted at moore231@marshall.edu.