Brian O'Dea

Who is Brian O'Dea?

Brian O'Dea is a Canadian former drug smuggler.

Born in Newfoundland, 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 U.S.

Under increasing threat from the Drug Enforcement Administration, 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 pled guilty and was sentenced to ten years in jail, being transferred to the Springhill Penitentiary in Canada in 1992.