The “deadliest drug our nation has ever seen” may be dressed up as Halloween candy this year, warn 13 Republican U.S. senators in a public service announcement.

Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall, a medical doctor, is joined by 12 other U.S. Senate Republicans in the pre-Halloween video warning that “the powerful drug cartels are coming after your kids, your neighbors, your students, your family members and your friends. Fake pills laced with fentanyl are beginning to look like candy in an effort to lure young Americans. …

“Even just handling these pills or powders masquerading as candy can kill a person. All it takes is one pill or enough powder to fit on the tip of a pencil to poison and kill someone.”

In the past two years, 10 tons of the deadly drug fentanyl – by and large manufactured in China – has been seized at the U.S. border with Mexico. It’s likely a fraction of the true amount of the drug making it into the country.

“We know fentanyl is in our neighborhoods because it is killing Americans at record rates – over 150 people per day. This is the deadliest drug our nation has ever seen,” the senators say in the video.

The senators caution parents to:

• only let kids get candy from trusted neighbors, family and friends;
• set a curfew for trick-or-treaters;
• always double- and triple-check their candy for drugs or suspiciously packaged or unpackaged items;
• and remind kids to trick-or-treat in groups, and to check in with parents periodically.

Left-wing media outlets amazingly criticized the GOP public service announcement designed to safeguard children. “Republicans Are Spreading a Bogus ‘Rainbow Fentanyl’ Panic Ahead of the Midterms,” read a headline in The New Republic.

“No Treats, Only Tricks: Republicans Try to Ruin Halloween With Fake Rainbow Fentanyl Threat,” read a Rolling Stone headline, dutifully  parroted by Yahoo News.

“That’s ridiculous,” says Missouri state Sen. Holly Rehder, who guesses the media don’t believe and won’t report on the depth of the fentanyl crisis because the drug flows over a border that their Democrat friends in Washington, D.C. have pried wide open.

“It’s coming across the border. Maybe that’s why they’re having trouble acknowledging it,” Rehder says. “But it’s fact, and we have kids dying. We have people dying because of this, so we need to throw the party politics to the side and help.”

The Republican senators’ warning is “absolutely necessary,” Rehder says, adding that her friend’s nephew died from a substance laced with fentanyl, and that her district in southeast Missouri has seen several deaths from it in the past six months alone. “I plan to engage my social media as well [regarding] fentanyl.

“You know, one pill can kill, and that’s what they’re saying in the PSA. It’s absolutely true. Even touching fentanyl can be lethal. That’s why you see officers go in with gloves and different things. It’s incredibly potent, and it’s incredibly dangerous.”