Recognizing Gabriel's Challenge

Floor Speech

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Mr. BAUMGARTNER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today, one day after National Fentanyl Awareness Day, to honor the memory of a special young man and to share a call for action.

Gabriel Fensler was a much-loved son and brother who had struggled with addiction but had fought hard for his recovery. Gabriel relapsed one day after his 24th birthday.

Fentanyl is a crisis. In Spokane, we are feeling the weight of it. Last year alone, 270 lives were lost to fentanyl overdoses in Spokane County. It is a national epidemic that we must address with urgency. We must stop fentanyl from hitting our streets, and border security is a part of that.

Last year, over 21,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized at our borders, enough to kill billions. A recent executive order ended duty-free treatment for low-cost goods from China, which have been exploited as a major pathway to smuggle illicit drugs into the U.S. It was a measure that had bipartisan support.

Alongside law enforcement efforts, we must help those in recovery, like Gabriel, with comprehensive treatment and community support.

Gabriel's remarkable mother, Kitara Johnson-Jones, has turned her immense heartbreak into a call for action, launching Gabriel's Challenge, a community response to fentanyl, starting on Mother's Day and extending to Father's Day.

She is rallying the community to identify the gaps in support for addiction recovery and urging connection and action. It is a call to pray, a call to talk, and a call to engage.

In Kitara's own words:

No matter how many differences we have, we have one thing in common, and that is the serial killer in our community named fentanyl, and we can all rally behind that.

Mr. Speaker, let us join her in this fight in honor of Gabriel and so many others and work together to combat this fentanyl crisis.

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