Brian O'Dea
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Brian O'Dea is a noted former Canadian drug smuggler.
Born in 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, partner Tony Franulovich 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 U.S.
Under increasing threat from the DEA, he quit the business in 1986, but his life declined and he became addicted to drugs. After suffering an overdose in 1988 he rejected drugs, becoming a drug and alcohol addiction counselor. Three years later, however, the DEA finally had assembled a case against him and arrested him. He plead guilty and was sentenced to ten years in jail, being transferred to the Springhill Penitentiary in Canada in 1992.
In 1993 he was paroled and became a venture capitalist in Toronto. He attracted much media attention when, in 2001, he published a long advertisement in the National Post, advertising his executive management skills and being blatantly upfront about his past, arguing it was the greatest proof of his abilities. He went on to become a television and film producer, producing a number one show (Creepy Canada ([1])) on two Canadian networks.
He wrote the book HIGH: Confessions of a Pot Smuggler -release date April 11, 2006 (published by Random House) and in July (by Virgin Books in the UK and Australia). His book won the 2007 Arthur Ellis Award for Best True Crime Book. HIGH will be published in the United States in May of 2009 by Other Press.
Currently, a dramatic version of the book for film, as well as a documentary version of same for theatrical release are in pre-production.
[edit] External links
- [2] Brian O'Dea interview
