MORGANTOWN – The state Senate on Wednesday passed a Holocaust education bill and a pharmacist prescription bill and sent them to the House of Delegates.

SB 54 is the Holocaust bill. It says, “In collaboration with and utilizing guidance from the West Virginia Commission on Holocaust Education … all public schools located within this state shall give age-appropriate instruction on the Holocaust, the systematic, planned annihilation of European Jews and other groups by Nazi Germany, a watershed event in the history of humanity, to be taught in a manner that leads to an investigation of human behavior, and an examination of what it means to be a responsible and respectful person.”

Lead sponsor Sen. Mike Oliverio, R-Monongalia, said that 25 years ago he met a Holocaust survivor – the late Edith Levy, of Morgantown – who was an advocate for helping West Virginians understand the Holocaust. They established the Commission on Holocaust Education and created a resource facility for teachers.

This bill, he said, will require that instruction so students will be able “to see the world in a different light going forward.”

Bill co-sponsor Sen. Jack Woodrum, R-Summers, said many in the Senate have had the privilege of meeting Holocaust survivors and soldiers who liberated the camps. But many younger people will not have that opportunity.

“This is important for us to be able to educate them about this atrocity so it never happens again,” he said.

The vote was 34-0.

SB 526 is the Pharmacist Prescribing Authority Act, “to authorize pharmacists to practice the full extent of their education and training to prescribe low-risk medications to patients.”

The bill allows pharmacists to prescribe drugs – except controlled substances – for conditions that do not require a new diagnosis, have a diagnostic test that is waived under federal guidelines as “simple laboratory examinations and procedures that have an insignificant risk of an erroneous result,” or are patient emergencies in the pharmacist’s professional judgment.

It allows the pharmacist to notify, within 72 hours, the patient’s primary care physician of the test results and the drugs prescribed. It limits a prescription supply to 30 days and requires the pharmacist to notify the PCP if more than a 10-day supply is prescribed.

The vote was 33-1, with Health Chair Laura Wakim-Chapman, R-Ohio, voting no.