EX DRUG SMUGGLER MAKES MIGHTY CONFESSION

Former Drug Trafficker And Book Author Brian O'dea And I Seemed
Destined To Disagree.

In pursuit of an interview, and following his telephone instructions,
I'd spent 15 minutes trying to find his hotel room in the "north
tower" of the Sheraton Wall Centre. I tracked him down in the south
tower. He insisted he'd said "south."

His subsequent confession that his considerable adult problems are
rooted, in part, in "an overwhelming need to be right" was revealing.
But, when a Courier photographer phoned, and O'Dea gave him the wrong
room number, my doubts were laid to rest.

With a prison stint behind him, a succesful book about a rollicking
25-year career smuggling pot and cocaine, titled High: Confessions of
a Pot Smuggler, a solid family life and television career in Toronto,
O'Dea has lingering problems.

At 57, he wasn't the figure I expected to meet. Dressed in an
unfashionably loose-fitting stark black suit and single gold earring
in his left ear, the pasty-faced O'Dea might have stepped right out
of an Elmore Leonard novel-and not on the winning side. He was a far
cry from the Harrison-Ford-thoughtful photo on the back of the book jacket.

And there were other inconsistencies. We chatted about the suggestion
that his career in crime is attributable to sexual abuse he
experienced at a Newfoundland day-school run by the infamous
Christian Brothers of Mount Cashel.

Turns out he was fondled by a teacher-brother on several occasions. A
Random House press release says he was abused "at the hands of
priests"-incorrect on two counts.

Then there's a Random House inference that O'Dea did a lengthy stint
in a U.S. federal prison. While he was sentenced to 10 years-a
not-to-be-overlooked advertisement, of course-he spent 30 months in
prison, half of that in Canadian facilities.

However, his story is a fantastic one-and well told. In a nutshell,
O'Dea got away with metaphorical murder, moving drugs around much of
the Western Hemisphere for roughly 25 years-until the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Agency caught up with him.

The book's chapters alternate between the tale of his drug dealing
and other dysfunction, and his 15-month stay in the Terminal Island
prison in the Los Angeles harbour.

He drew his portrait of prison life, and particularly of the
Spanish-speaking prisoners, he said, by recording every detail and
linguistic nuance "as fast as I could" in his cell perch. "I wrote it
as I heard it when it was going on." The dialogue-with enough
f-letter words to erase an f computer key-rings wonderfully true.

In both book and conversation, O'Dea emphasizes the lack of justice
and due process that, in the U.S. at least, results in unreasonably
long sentences for non-violent drug offences. At Terminal Island,
some of the Mexicans, Chileans, Cubans, blacks and whites spend 15 or
more years for trafficking the likes of 300 pounds of pot.

(O'Dea, convicted of moving 50 tons of marijuana, valued at more than
$200 million, in and out of the U.S. via the San Juan Islands,
benefited by being tried in relatively liberal Seattle and by his
Canadian citizenship and connections.)

Yet his tale of moving contraband and evading the police is the more
riveting story, the highlight of which is an effort to fly "eight
tons of Columbian Gold" to rural Florida in a salvaged DC-6 that ends
up floating in the Caribbean (with O'Dea and the pilot aboard).

In the interview, O'Dea welcomed talk of de-criminalization and
derided the "war on drugs." He conceded that coke, the cause of his
own undoing, is "insidious and vicious". He argued forcefully that
tobacco and alcohol are just as harmful as, say, marijuana or hash.
However, efforts to fine-tune the discussion went nowhere. He did not
entertain subtleties. As for the possibility that a prohibition on
drugs may serve a "buyer beware" function, O'Dea said flatly:
"Illegality has never stopped anybody."

What finally stopped O'Dea-after years of "carrying excess to, well,
excess"-was a heart attack close to his 40th birthday. It's been a
long road back. But separating the romance from what he described in
person as his "redemption" isn't easy.

The book is relentlessly upbeat. It's not until page 320 of 349 pages
(356 if you include an appendix devoted to the provenance of more
than 50 characters who appear in the pages) that things start to fall apart.

In the flesh, O'Dea appeared to be playing the role of the Prodigal
Son. He seemed a little nervous, unsure of himself-yet he was
uncommonly polite and upfront. He talked of his reception following
his release from prison: "I was considered disposable, forgettable, a
stay-away-from, a useless case."

O'Dea also spoke of his post-prison struggle to find work-though he
asked that the financial details not be reported. He eventually
established, and went on to produce and most recently host, his own
TV series, Creepy Canada, mostly devoted to the paranormal (ghosts,
aliens, voodoo, etc). Carried by the Outdoor Life Network, Creepy
Canada is in its fourth season (and O'Dea looks a whole lot happier
in his www.creepy.tv photo).

As for his newly published book, it's been picked up by Virgin Books
in the UK, which describes it as "a candid, brutal story of one of
the world's most successful smugglers." "In Britain they're edgy,
cheeky, in-your-face," he said. "I feel comfortable with that."

O'Dea now follows the tenets of Baba Ram Dass, the LSD-promoting
Harvard professor, also known as Richard Albert, who 35 years ago
published the phenomenally successful book Be Here Now. Of the
supremacy of the present moment, O'Dea said: "I would never say that
smoking pot is not cost free_ it takes you out of the here and now."
It's something, I guess, that we can agree upon.