Sitting at a Starbucks in the Beach, in east-end Toronto, Brian O'Dea
talks about his adventures in the drug world from dealing drugs at university
to bringing in the two largest shipments of marijuana in U.S. history,
almost amazed that he lived through it all. He is a born story teller.
O'Dea kept a journal while in jail.
Embarked on a new career - pot smuggling - in university
O'Dea was born to a well-known Newfoundland family. His father owned
the local brewery a local politician.
The family had high expectations for O'Dea. But his life would take
a different path. At university, O'Dea started off as a small-time
drug dealer supplying his friends.
He spent time in jail and met a man called Benny who invited him to
Bogota, Colombia. O'Dea, with little Spanish, found himself wandering
the streets of Bogota trying to find Benny's address. Benny's name
lead him to Colombian drug dealers. He had arrived in Colombia with $500
in his pocket, ready to do business. His new associates got a kick out
of that. "He said ‘Man you got big balls…'".
O'Dea was given 50 grams of cocaine and was told to come back if
he could sell it. He did, and soon, the deals got bigger.
A narrow escape from death in the sea
He began smuggling marijuana and cocaine out of Colombia into the United
States in an old DC-6. His pilot had never flown a DC-6 before but was
confident he could do it because he had read the manual. O'Dea talks
about one trip that almost killed them. The engines conked out over the
Pacific. The shipment of 27 tonnes of marajuana was lost.
"It was just a matter of survival. It was, just, get out, stay on the plane as
long as possible. And the start swimming."
O'Dea brought in the largest drug hauls in U.S. history.
He wasn't discouraged. His next enterprise took him to Alaska. Using
fishing boats as a cover O'Dea and his associates ended up bringing
67 tonnes of marijuana into the U.S. in 1986 and 1987, the largest
drug hauls in U.S. history. It sold for two hundred million dollars on
the streets. O'Dea was bringing marijuana from Asia over the Bering Sea
to Alaska by boat and then down into the U.S. by transport truck. He had
120 people working for him.
Captured, after he left the business
But, one former disgruntled employee turned informer. It took the Drug
Enforcement Agency six years to put together a case against O'Dea
and his associates. By this time, O'Dea had changed his life after
a near-death cocaine overdose and he was now counselling for drug addiction.
O'Dea remembers that day in 1990 when the DEA came knocking on his
door. "I was working as a counsellor in an alcohol drug and rehab
center. So far away from that business. I was lying in bed there was a
knock on my door. I said this is the wreckage of my past knocking on this
door. There were some guys with some badges and they said ‘Are you
Brian O'Dea?' and I said ‘I wish I wasn't, but
I am.'"
He was sentenced to ten years in 1990 and served one year in a U.S. prison
and was then transferred to a Canadian facility where he was paroled in
1995.
Advertising for a new career
In 2001, he ran an ad in the National Post in the hopes of finding a job.
It was titled "Former Marijuana Smuggler" and read:
The ad O'Dea placed in the Financial Post.
"Having successfully completed a 10-year sentence, incident free, for
importing seventy-five tons of marijuana into the United States, I am now
seeking a legal and legitimate means to support myself and my family. Business
experience: Owned and operated a successful fishing business -- multi-vessel,
one airplane, one island and processing facility. Simultaneously owned and
operated a fleet of tractor-trailer trucks conducting business in the western
United States.... I also participated in the executive level management of
120 people worldwide in a successful pot-smuggling venture with revenues
in excess of $100-million US annually."
He received 600 responses.
O'Dea's adventures and struggles are captured in his new book "High:
Confessions of a Pot Smuggler". It is publised by Random
House. He is now a successful television producer in Toronto. 
