Jelly Roll Speaks At Senate Hearing on Fentanyl
Jelly Roll spent two hours and thirty minutes in a Senate hearing this morning (1/11) in Washington D.C. before the Committee of Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. The hearing was titled “Stopping the Flow of Fentanyl: Public Awareness and Legislative Solutions.”
His wife Bunnie sat behind him at the hearing. Jelly Roll was one of three witnesses who spoke about the fentanyl crisis. He answered questions from a number of U.S. Senators.
His opening statement
Jelly said in his opening statement that he was a “little nervous” to be there. He began, “I think it’s important to note before I start that in these five minutes that I’ll be speaking, that somebody in the United States will die of a drug overdose. It is almost a seventy-two percent chance that during those five minutes, it will be Fentanyl related.”
Jelly introduced himself with his given name, Jason DeFord. He said, “It is important to establish that I am a musician and that I have no political alliance. I am neither Democrat nor Republican. In fact, because of my past, my right to vote has been restricted. Therefore, I have never paid attention to a political race in my life.”
He continued, “Ironically, I think that makes me the perfect person to speak about this. Because fentanyl transcends partisanship and idealogy.”
During his opening statement, Jelly described how addiction has affected his life and the lives of so many others from an early age. He said, “I’ve attended more funerals than I care to share with you all. I could sit here and cry for days about the caskets I’ve carried and the people I have loved dearly, deeply in my soul. Good people, not just drug addicts (but) uncles, friends, cousins, normal people. Some people that just got in a car wreck and started taking a pain pill to manage it, and one thing led to another. How fast it spirals out of control, I don’t think people truly understand.”
Jelly touched on how, as a drug dealer, he used to be part of the problem. Today, he is there to be “part of the solution.”
Several Senators asked Jelly questions during the lengthy hearing, and many complimented him on stepping forward to tell his story of struggle and hardship to help others in need.
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Senator Sherrod Brown asked him his thoughts on the Senate coming together and putting aside their differences to battle the fentanyl drug use in our country. Jelly said, “From the outside looking in, we don’t see nothing happening in D.C. except for fights. All we see is war, and all we see is division, and it makes us feel unheard and unseen. And it makes us feel like all our problems will always get caught in some kind of partisan issue, and you and Senator [Tim] Scott coming together is taking the first steps in what I think is the beginning of the change that is needed.”
Many more members of the Senate talked to Jelly, asking him questions about his past. Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, who asked about how Jelly’s felony record has affected his life still today.
Jelly replied, “I carry it anyway I can carry it, Senator, thanks for asking. There’s so many countries I’m not allowed into, which I never thought would matter until I start having hit records in Canada and Germany, and I’m not allowed to go.”
He continued, “I am not allowed to vote. Any core right has been restricted for me. I struggled to buy a home because homeowners’ insurance were trying to charge me premiums because of my felony. I’ve even had neighborhoods where HOA’s flat wouldn’t let me live there because of my felony.”
Jelly said that his state of Tennessee has a violent offender policy with zero forgiveness for violent offenses. He noted, “It’s a crime I committed when I was fifteen; I’ll never be able to get expunged.”
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