Blake Masters: Democrat Mark Kelly Should Attend Funerals of Teens Who Overdosed on Fentanyl

Blake Masters, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Arizona, declared that his opponent, Sen Mark Kelly (D-AZ), “should be forced to attend the funerals” of American teenagers who overdosed on fentanyl because “of his support for” the Biden administration’s open borders policies.

His comments came while speaking at GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake’s “Faith and Family Fest” rally over the weekend.

“There are no words to describe tens of thousands of dead American teenagers, dead from fentanyl because of our wide open southern border,” Masters told supporters at the Paloma Community Church in Mesa.

“Mark Kelly should be forced to attend the funerals of each of those dead children so he can better understand the consequences of his support for Joe Biden’s open borders,” he continued. “I truly mean that.”

In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that in 2021 alone, there were an estimated 71,238 synthetic opioid deaths in the United States, primarily from fentanyl. This is 13,404 more than in 2020, which saw 57,834.

The southern border is a central avenue for smugglers and cartels to flood the United States with the highly addictive and lethal synthetic drug. As the New York Post reported Saturday, fentanyl production typically “begins in China, where a network of underground labs batch up ‘precursor’ chemicals needed to manufacture the drug.”

The drug is synthesized in Mexico and smuggled across the border, as the Post noted:

Drug organizations including the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation cartel use precursor chemicals from China to manufacture fentanyl, which is cheaper and more profitable than heroin. One kilo of fentanyl can reap as much as $1.2 million compared to $60k from the same amount of heroin.

Kelly “has repeatedly voted against border security measures and enabled the Biden border crisis,” as Breitbart News reported on August 22:

Kelly voted against border security at least three times in 2021 alone. In February of 2021, Kelly voted against an amendment that would have kept the Biden administration from being able to cancel existing border wall contracts.

In May of the same year, Kelly voted against border security again, this time voting against an amendment that would have prohibited the Biden administration from cancelling border wall contracts for which funds had already been appropriated. Kelly similarly voted against border security again in August.

In June alone, Border Patrol agents seized 680 pounds of fentanyl at the border, which is enough to kill 140 million Americans, as Breitbart News noted, citing the Federation of American Immigration Reform.