CNN
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Jason DeFord, the rapper and nation star referred to as “Jelly Roll,” testified through the Senate’s Banking, Housing and City Affairs Committee listening to on Thursday the place he lobbied for stronger laws towards the continuing fentanyl crisis in the USA.
DeFord started his testimony through the committee’s “Stopping the Flow of Fentanyl: Public Awareness and Legislative Solutions” listening to by sharing varied figures on the rising variety of fentanyl- and drug overdose-related deaths within the nation, and said his bipartisan place as he fights for a trigger that’s private to him.
“I’ve attended extra funerals than I care to share with y’all, this committee. I might sit right here and cry for days in regards to the caskets I’ve carried of individuals I really like dearly, deeply, in my soul,” he mentioned.
CNN reported in October that new estimates from the US Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention’s Nationwide Heart for Well being Statistics challenge that greater than 112,000 folks died from a drug overdose within the 12-month interval ending in Might 2023, a rise of greater than 2,700 from the earlier yr.
Fentanyl and different artificial opioids have been concerned within the overwhelming majority of overdose deaths, in keeping with the provisional knowledge.
On Thursday, DeFord urged the Senate to cross the FEND Off Fentanyl Act, which is a “sanctions and anti-money laundering invoice to assist fight the nation’s fentanyl disaster by concentrating on opioid traffickers devastating America’s communities,” in keeping with a description of the invoice on the Banking, Housing and City Affairs Committee’s web site.
“It’s time for us to be proactive and never reactive,” he mentioned, later including, “I actually consider in my coronary heart that this invoice will cease the provision and might help cease the provision of fentanyl.”
In earlier interviews, DeFord has spoken brazenly about his personal historical past with drug-related crimes and the varied incarcerations that they resulted in, saying throughout his testimony on Thursday that “I believed after I offered medicine, genuinely, that promoting medicine was a victimless crime.”
Acknowledging the “paradox of my historical past as a drug supplier standing in entrance of this committee,” DeFord famous his consciousness that he, at one level, “was part of the issue.”
“I introduced my group down. I harm folks. I used to be the uneducated man within the kitchen enjoying chemist with medicine I knew completely nothing about, identical to these drug sellers are doing proper now after they’re mixing each drug in the marketplace with fentanyl. They usually’re killing the folks we love,” he mentioned.
DeFord, who’s now a two-time Grammy nominee and a CMA Award winner, went on to say, “I’m right here now standing as a person that wishes to be part of the answer.”