Patrick Kennedy: “I rise today as the lead Democratic cosponsor of the ASTHMA Act of 2003, and I want to acknowledge my good friend and…”

“I rise today as the lead Democratic cosponsor of the ASTHMA Act of 2003, and I want to acknowledge my good friend and partner, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns), for his excellent leadership on this matter. I think he illustrated better than anything else the reason why we are pushing this legislation when he talked about the story of Catrina Lewis. We in Rhode Island, and those stories are happening all over the country; in Rhode Island, we have a family, the father, Walter Stone, and the mother, Lynn Stone, lost their daughter, Morgan. She was a mild asthmatic. She was attending college and was killed when her asthma overcame her and she was not able to gain access to her medications. This is a life-and-death issue. Unfortunately, many States have made it a liability for those students to carry their inhalers to school when those students need their medications. Tragically, as we have seen in Catrina Lewis's case and in Morgan Stone's case, it can be fatal.”