Country singer Jelly Roll testifies at Senate hearing on fentanyl law

Rapper and country singer Jelly Roll called on lawmakers to stop the flow of fentanyl and curb the spread of drug addiction.

“I was the uneducated man in the kitchen playing chemist with drugs I knew absolutely nothing about, just like these drug dealers are doing now when they mix every drug on the market with fentanyl. And they’re killing the people we love,” he said.

The Grammy-nominated singer, whose real name is Jason DeFord, spoke before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday.

The panel is considering legislative options, including the FEND Off Fentanyl Act, a law to sanction and combat money laundering against opioid traffickers.

“Fentanyl goes beyond partisanship and ideology,” DeFord said. “I could sit here and cry for days over the coffins in which I carried people I loved dearly, deep in my soul. Good people.”

DeFord has been open about his support for the FEND Off Fentanyl bill, admitting that he himself has contributed to the worsening of the crisis, having been in and out of prison since his youth for crimes such as drug trafficking.

“When I was selling drugs, I believed drug trafficking was a victimless crime,” he told the Senate committee. “Now I have a 15-year-old daughter whose mother is addicted to drugs. Every day I look into the eyes of a victim in my household suffering the effects of drugs, and every day I have to ask myself if today will be the day my wife and I have to tell my daughter that her mother has become part of the national statistics,” he said.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times more potent than heroin.

According to the CDC, nearly 110,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2022 and estimates that about 75,000 of those deaths involved synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.

Most fentanyl is imported from China and Mexico. According to the DEA, the number of seizures at the border has increased by over 140% in just three years.

In 2021, officials at the southern border seized over 11,000 pounds of fentanyl; just two years later, that amount rose to 27,000 pounds.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story referred to Jason “Jelly Roll” DeFord as a Grammy-winning singer.

LEARN MORE: US Treasury Department launches new task force against fentanyl trafficking