Tim Hortons is one of Canada’s most iconic brands. It’s a place to grab a double-double, a Boston cream donut, and catch up with friends. It’s also increasingly a place to do hard drugs—at least when it comes to a Tim Hortons location in the city of Oshawa, just east of Toronto, that has had to close its indoor dining because too many drug users were injecting and being violent throughout the restaurant.
When I lived in Toronto’s downtown core we were two blocks away from Moss Park, the epicentre of the city’s hard drug and homeless culture. There is a Tims attached to the building we lived in. They never closed the dining room but they should have. Drug addicts routinely used the bathroom for injecting. I never could take my kids for a donut at a place attached to their own home. How sad.
The Oshawa story is a tragedy on every level. It’s bad for the community. It’s bad for the neighbours. It’s bad for the business owner. It’s awful for the employees who have to clean up after it. And it’s certainly no way for these people to live.
The current approach to the drug crisis isn’t working. Our laws have become increasingly permissive of crimes surrounding hard drugs. Here in Canada we even provide those drugs and related paraphernalia courtesy of the taxpayer. And when the system engages with people struggling with addiction, it barely attempts to refer them to treatment services.
We must pursue a better way because if we don’t we’re giving up, both on the addicts themselves and on the need to turn around the urban decay afflicting too many North American cities.
The Grammy-nominated musician appeared before a United States Senate committee to testify on the Fentanyl Eradication and Narcotics Deterrence (FEND) Off Fentanyl Act. The proposed legislation was first put forward by Republican Senator Tim Scott and Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. The two Senators from across the aisle rightly see the drug crisis in America as a non-partisan issue that requires a united response.
“In 2021, nearly 107,000 Americans died from an overdose, and 65% of overdose deaths were caused by fentanyl,” reads a press release for the FEND Act. “Last year, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized over 379 million deadly doses of fentanyl – more than double the amount of fentanyl-laced, fake prescription pills that it seized in 2021, and enough to supply a lethal dose to every American.”
What the act does is direct the Treasury Department to go after the finances of organized crime operations and stop the flow of fentanyl and its ingredients into the country from both China and Mexico.
This is a much-needed push. These sorts of measures are needed in both the United States and Canada. But the FEND Act was first put forward a year ago and should be receiving more attention. That’s why the headline grabbing testimony by Jelly Roll was so powerful.
Covered in tattoos, with a country drawl, the singer’s testimony calling for action on the drug crisis makes people look twice at what they’re seeing on the screens. It wasn’t politics as usual.
What was also powerful is that Jelly Roll is a former drug dealer who now recognizes the pain he brought to communities.
“I was a part of the problem,” he said. “I am here now standing as a man that wants to be a part of the solution. I brought my community down. I hurt people. I was the uneducated man in the kitchen playing chemist with drugs I knew absolutely nothing about.”
These are powerful words. We need more of them. There are a lot of people who remain part of the problem, resistant to change and opposed to forging new paths forward to shut down this crisis.
When it’s become so bad that Tim Hortons dining areas need to be shut down, it should be clear to everyone that something’s got to change.
