A former drug peddler turned country rock star addressed U.S. lawmakers on Thursday to call for action to stop the flow of fentanyl coming across the border.
Jason “Jelly Roll” DeFord testified before the Senate’s Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (BHUA) Committee on January 11 to bring attention to what he characterized as an issue that transcends partisan politics: the fentanyl crisis.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is cheap to fabricate and highly addictive due to its high potency. Its main suppliers are in Mexico, China, and India, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency.
“I think it’s important to note that in these five minutes I’ll be speaking, somebody in the United States will die of a drug overdose. It is almost a 72% chance that during those five minutes, it will be fentanyl-related,” the artist began.
Now 39 years old, Jelly Roll spoke about how from roughly the ages of 14 to 24, he was on the wrong side of the drug war.
“I brought my community down. I hurt people,” he testified. “I was the uneducated man in the kitchen playing chemist with drugs I knew absolutely nothing about, just like these drug dealers are doing right now when they’re mixing every drug on the market with fentanyl. And they’re killing the people we love.”
He called for a change to the way Americans view drug addiction, suggesting that it has been ignored due to a tendency “to bully and shame drug addicts, instead of … trying to understand what the actual root of the problem is.”
The former convict also urged policymakers to take proactive, not reactive, steps toward stopping fentanyl suppliers by passing the Fentanyl Eradication and Narcotics Deterrence (FEND) Off Fentanyl Act.
The bipartisan bill authored by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), chair of the BHUA Committee, would target the international trafficking of fentanyl through financial sanctions and use the proceeds to shore up law enforcement endeavors.
Moreover, the FEND Off Fentanyl Act would make fentanyl-related money laundering schemes a top priority of the Treasury Department, putting transnational criminal organizations, drug cartels, and their co-conspirators in its crosshairs.
In Dallas, drug crime and other criminal activity have been soaring in the city center, as covered by The Dallas Express. Downtown Dallas regularly logs up higher crime rates than Fort Worth’s downtown area, which is patrolled by a dedicated police unit and private security guards.
The Dallas Police Department only fields around 3,000 officers despite a prior City report advising a force of 4,000 is needed to properly ensure public safety. Budgeting only $654 million dollars for DPD this year, City officials seem to be looking to spend considerably less than other high-crime jurisdictions, like New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Black and Hispanic Dallasites have been bearing the brunt of the police shortage, making up the overwhelming majority of victims when it comes to assaults and murders, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.