The grieving parents of children who died from fentanyl poisoning during Biden's presidency are sharing their anger with DailyMail.com after watching him laugh off another mother's loss of two sons to the same drug because it happened under Trump's watch.
The parents said Biden's nonchalant attitude towards the worsening fentanyl epidemic is not only insulting to them and their late children's memory - but that it will also lead to more deaths.
Their grief was whipped into a white-hot rage on March 1 when Biden, in an attempt to mock Marjorie Taylor Greene, invoked the deaths of two young brothers who died from fentanyl poisoning in 2020.
'The interesting thing is that fentanyl [the boys] took came during the last administration, haha,' laughed Biden to a room of chuckling peers.
The boys are the sons of Rebecca Kiessling, a pro-life Republican lawyer who had testified before Congress about the worsening fentanyl crisis in the desperate hope that Democrats would heed her call for action.
Scroll down for video
Sixteen-year-old Layton Ivins (L) from Georgetown, Texas, died in January this year after taking what he thought was a Percocet. Hannah Elise, also 16, died in Colorado in December 2021
She asked for an apology from the White House but never received one.
While Greene may have wrongly suggested that the Kiessling brothers died after Biden took office, hundreds of thousands of other youngsters have succumb to the drug on his watch.
Their parents now want tighter border control and harsher criminal consequences for the drug dealers who are caught peddling the fake pills that many kids take, completely unaware that they are laced with a fatal dose of the opioid.
Overdose deaths have skyrocketed over the last three years, rising by 50% from 52,000 in 2016 to 106,000 in 2021.
The White House attributes the majority to fentanyl poisoning or overdose, and say the drug comes almost entirely from China via Mexico, with a handful of cartels responsible for bringing them across the border.
Six out of 10 fake prescription pills tested by the DEA in 2022 contained fentanyl, and the 'vast majority' came from the Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartels.
For years, the synthetic drug had been used as a cheaper, more readily available substitute for heroin. Now though, it is being chopped up with cocaine, MDMA and packed into pills too.
Shannon Mulligan, 22, died in Foxborough, Massachusetts, in March 2021. She also thought she was taking a Percocet - but was instead sold a pill that had been pressed with fentanyl
Shannon's mother Heather with her four-year-old daughter, who she now helps care for. She told DailyMail.com: 'This is everywhere - it can happen to any kid, and the president should be ashamed of himself'
That is what killed 16-year-old Layton Ivins, a high school student from Georgetown, Texas, who died a month ago.
'He was not a drug user, it was the curiosity in high school. It was a one time thing for him and it took his life,' his father Cody told DailyMail.com.
Layton thought he was taking a Percocet but in fact ingested a black market pill.
He knew of the dangers of fentanyl, his father said, and asked repeatedly if the tablet he was taking was fake or genuine. Cody says he was told it was real.
'This is terrifying, what is happening to our children. And it's as if [the Biden administration] doesn't want people to know about it.'
'This should be treated with as much passion and force as they did COVID – this is wiping out the next generation that’s supposed to be coming in and filling people’s shoes. This is an epidemic,' he said.
Heather Mulligan's daughter Shannon was 26 when she died from a fentanyl poisoning in March 2021.
She had become addicted to prescription Percocets and sought help to get off them - but died after taking a fake pill.
'She reached out for something – it was fake. And it killed her. I found her praying beside her bed,' Heather, who works in an orthodontist's office in Foxborough, Massachusetts, said.
Colin Kulberson, 26, had enough fentanyl in his system to kill 16 people when he died at home in Pennsylvania in June 2022
Colin's mother Sheila Kemmer says she still does not know if he took a pill or if the marijuana he had been smoking was laced with the lethal drug. They are shown together when he was a child
She too was outraged by Biden laughing off the Kiessling brothers' deaths.
'He of all people should be ashamed of himself. His son has substance abuse issues.
'It could have been his child. He has no right to laugh about any child in this country dying. He should be ashamed of himself.
'This is everywhere. We are a good family, we live in a beautiful home, you could say we're middle class. But this can happen to anyone.
Cody Ivins with his son, Layton. He said of the Biden administration: 'Is it going to take one of their kids to die before they get mad about it?'
'Kids will experiment with things and they don’t even know what they are taking,' she said.
Sheila Kremmer's 26-year-old son Colin died at home in Pennsylvania in June. He had overcome a heroin addiction and was smoking marijuana when he died.
His autopsy revealed that he had 32 nanograms of fentanyl in his system when he died - enough to kill 16 people.
'I was scared about the heroin, I didn’t know I had to be scared about this. When he died, he didn't have any heroin in his system.
'Did he take a pill thinking it was a Percocet or Xanax? Or was it in his weed? I don’t know. I'll never know,' Sheila told DailyMail.com through tears.
Police are yet to trace where the fentanyl came from that killed him.
'They are still investigating who gave him this, so they say. I don’t believe it – the stigma surrounding drugs is they deserve it, addiction is a choice and they chose the wrong thing. It’s not the case.
'They don’t understand. My son wasn’t a loser, he wasn’t a druggie. He was a good kid.
'He didn’t deserve to die alone. He didn’t deserve to die that way. It just breaks my heart. It was not an overdose – it was murder. 32 nanograms? That’s murder.'
DailyMail.com spoke with seven families whose children have all died from fentanyl poisoning in the last three years.
They all say the current administration is not doing nearly enough to tackle the crisis.
Ivins, who works as an appliance repairman in Georgetown, Texas, said he has no faith in the President when it comes to securing the border.
'It’s a joke to them. He just wants to place the blame. Everything’s Trump. I don’t know if I’d waste my breath sending a message to him.
Patrick Lee Crossno, 30, thought he was taking a Xanax when he died. He'd been to a doctor but was wrongly prescribed anti-depressants, and had no health insurance to keep returning. A friend gave him the pill that killed him. Jordan Bean (right) died aged 32 in May 2022
Jesse Byrd died in a so-called recovery house in Maryland in February 2022, less than a month before his 27th birthday. He was found dead in the top bunk of a shared room with 10 other recovering addicts
'That’s just how disconnected he is with what needs to happen. The whole administration should be ashamed of itself of the condition our country is in.'
The Biden administration has acknowledged that the majority of fentanyl in the US is produced in some part in China.
Ivins - and the other parents - are calling for sanctions to be placed against Beijing until the flow of the deadly drugs stop, but none are holding their breath.
'I don’t know if I’d waste my breath sending a message to [Biden]. That’s just how disconnected he is with what needs to happen. The whole administration should be ashamed of itself of the condition our country is in.
'Is it going to take one of their kids to die before they actually get mad about it? We don’t have secret service guarding our families like he has his.
'The average American doesn’t have someone to come through with drug dogs coming through everywhere they go.
'He’s safe, his family is safe and everyone is fending for themselves, while he’s the only one who can do something about it.'
Rebecca Kiessling, a mother from Michigan who lost two sons to fentanyl poisoning, wipes away tears during her testimony on Tuesday
Kiessling testified before congress earlier this week about her sons' deaths. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said the Biden administration was doing 'nothing' to stop fentanyl deaths among young people
Kiessling's sons Caleb and Kyler died in 2020 when they were 18 and 20 after taking a pill that they did not know was laced with fentanyl
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden was expressing 'sympathy' when he spoke of a mom who lost her two sons to drugs laced with fentanyl and his words were 'mischaracterized'
The DEA has warned that the escalating fentanyl crisis is 'a new, deeper, more deadly threat than we have ever seen.'
Fentanyl poisoning is now the leading cause of death than young people in America.
Despite an increasingly unstable border and rampant cartel violence, the Biden administration does not appear to be concerned.
'Because of the work that this President has done, because of what we’ve done specifically on fentanyl at the border, it’s at historic lows — historic levels that we have been able to record a number of personnel working to secure the border because of what we’ve been able to do, seizing that fentanyl.
'We’ve done it in a historic way. That’s because of what this President has done,' White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said this week.
Fentanyl poisoning is now the leading cause of death than young people in America
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pa3IpbCmmZmhe6S7ja6iaKaVrMBwrdGtoJyklWJ%2BcoSRb3Bxa1%2BEwrN5wqGgpZyimrtusMiem2aelaPBorrYpWR7oZSau27AzqiiZqeWm7aksYylmK6fmGLBsLuNoaumpA%3D%3D