Brian O'Dea

Brian O'Dea (born 1948) is a Canadian former drug smuggler.

Life

Born in St. John's, Newfoundland in 1948, he first worked as a minor drug dealer in the province. Moving up he became an importer of marijuana to Canada from the United Kingdom. After being arrested on a minor charge in Canada he served a brief sentence before moving to Jamaica, where he coordinated marijuana and cocaine smuggling operations going from Colombia to the United States and Canada.

Moving to California, he became one of the leaders in exporting marijuana from Southeast Asia in the years after the Vietnam War. Using fishing vessels as cover he brought boatloads of drugs into the pacific northwest United States. Controlling a trucking company, two hundred-foot fishing vessels, and a workforce of 120, O'Dea and crew imported hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of marijuana to ports in Washington at the business' peak in the early 1980s. He and his partners would then sell the drugs throughout the United States.

Under increasing threat from the Drug Enforcement Administration, he quit the business in 1986, but his life declined and he became addicted to drugs.[1] After suffering an overdose in 1988 he quit drugs, becoming a drug and alcohol addiction counselor.[1] Three years later, however, the DEA finally had assembled a case against him and arrested him.[1] He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to ten years in jail, being transferred to the Springhill Penitentiary in Canada in 1992.[1]

Parole

In 1993, he was paroled and became a venture capitalist in Toronto. He attracted much media attention in 2001 when he published an advertisement in the National Post through which he attempted to obtain employment by highlighting aspects of his drug smuggling endeavors, including his personnel and logistics management skills. He went on to become a television and film producer, producing a number one show, Creepy Canada, which aired on the OLN and Destination America networks

Book

He wrote the book HIGH: Confessions of a Pot Smuggler, released 11 April 2006 (published by Random House), in July (by Virgin Books in the UK and Australia), and in May 2009 by Other Press for the USA market.[2] His book won the 2007 Arthur Ellis Award for Best True Crime Book.[3]

O'Dea can be heard narrating the 2009 documentary Hangman's Graveyard, which tells the story of an archaeological investigation at Toronto's Old Don Jail to uncover a long forgotten cemetery.

Television

In 2012, O'Dea appeared as Kevin O'Leary's advisor on the CBC Television Reality TV Show Redemption Inc.,[4] a show where ex-convicts compete for a chance to have Kevin O'Leary invest in their legitimate start-up business, and earn redemption.[5]

O'Dea told his story of smuggling drugs, getting caught and changing his life in the "Trust Me" segment[6] of the Snap Judgment radio show.

References
  1. Rumbolt, Curtis (2 November 2016). "Too legit to quit: Former drug smuggler Brian O'Dea cashing in on marijuana legalization". CBC.ca. Ottawa, CA.
  2. Brian O'Dea (2009). High: Confessions of an International Drug Smuggler. Other Press. ISBN 159051310X.
  3. "2007 Arthur Ellis Award for Best True Crime Book".
  4. "About The Show". CBC. Retrieved 22 February 2013.
  5. "Redemption, Inc. Season One, Episode One". CBC. 9 January 2012. Retrieved 22 February 2013.
  6. "Bait and Switch/Trust Me/Snap Judgment". Retrieved 26 February 2014.
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