The Current - A mom's mission to stop her daughter's drug dealer

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

In Vancouver's Lower Mainland, a dealer known only as "Jay" sold drugs to teens, making drop-offs right next to their high schools and homes, offering free "goodie bags" of Xanax and other drugs. When Julie Nystrom discovered her 17-year-old daughter was hooked on counterfeit pills from Jay, she went to the police. The cops told her that they needed names, details, so she decided to take matters into her own hands and hired a private investigator.

We love Zadie Smith for her novels and her essays, not to mention her incredible jumpsuits and beautiful headscarves. She's kind of iconic, but she's also just a mom who has a teen to deal with. I tentatively suggested to my daughter, hey, I wrote this piece about being a teenager. Before I even got to the end of the sentence, she was like, hell no. Get that away from me. You could literally be Zadie Smith and your kids still might not want to listen to you.

But if you want to listen to more, of Zadie, you can head to my podcast. Bookends with Matea Roach. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. In Canada, an average of 20 people every day die from opioid toxicity. In British Columbia, toxic drugs are a leading cause of accidental death for youth under the age of 19. What we don't hear much about is how these drugs can end up in the hands of teenagers. Our producer, Enza Uda spoke with Vancouver teens to tell the story of a drug dealer,

his young customers, and a mom who was determined to stop him. Her research exposed the heightened stakes for teens accessing drugs in the middle of a toxic drugs crisis. And this week, that documentary was recognized by the Jack Webster Foundation for Excellence in Feature Radio Reporting.

This is Everybody Loves Jay. In September of 2023, a mom in British Columbia sets up a secret meeting. It's a crisp fall evening. Julie Nystrom drives into an empty parking lot of a park in the heart of East Vancouver. It was dark.

It just felt a little bit off, you know. I felt a little bit clandestine, only because I'd never met police officers in the dark. You know, it was just me. She has crucial information that she needs to share. Her daughter is in trouble. Honestly, my might have seemed a little bit odd. but I didn't care.

I mean, I would have met them on the moon if they needed me to meet them in the moon. And as police drive away, she prays that the information she passes on to them is enough to kickstart an investigation. This isn't the first time Julie has contacted the police. Her 17-year-old daughter, Beth, is hooked on prescription pills, most likely counterfeit. And Julie has learned something about the grown man who's supposed to be a person. her daughter is adamant she doesn't want mom getting involved she would threaten me saying don't you dare do anything about this i'll never talk to again because she was terrified terrified of what would happen if the man she knows as jay finds out this is a scumbag piece of shit drug dealer

how dare you take out our young people how dare you because this was bigger and more more ferocious than I even knew. This guy was going everywhere and he didn't care who he took up. On that initial call with police, they asked if her daughter would be willing to talk to them. She tells them absolutely not. There's no way she would.

But they make it clear. They need details. Give us something. We need something. I said, okay, I'll get you something. Frustrated by what she sees as the police is in action, Julie would come up with a plan to catch Jay, but first, she would need money, a sleuth, and her daughter's help.

Julie's daughter, Beth, lives here in an old high-rise. Beth isn't her real name. We aren't identifying her because she fears speaking out could impact her safety. She's agreed to tell me about Jay and her addiction. I've, like, thought about, like, why I was, like, so in deep at a certain point. And I think that a big reason was because how easy it was for me to access them and, like, how, like, literally it was just a contact on my phone and he'd come, like, two blocks from my house.

Over a period of just a couple of years from the time she's 15, he supplies her with whatever she wants. I accessed shrooms. I accessed alcohol. I accessed weed. I accessed vapes, I accessed acid, I accessed Molly, I accessed cocaine, I accessed percocets. Perkissettes are painkillers, a combination of oxycodone and acetaminophen. Molly's MDMA or ecstasy.

I accessed Xanax. Xanax is a benzodiazepine used to treat anxiety, also known as bars because of their shape. And I also accessed 2CB. What's that? 2CB is like, from what he told me, it was like a mix of like Molly and acid where you're super euphoric and you can be dancing all night. So she's talking about a designer drug. It's a synthetic psychedelic. 2CBs could also be a revolving cocktail of MDMA, ketamine, meth, and opioids like fentanyl.

It's also known as pink cocaine. You actually don't know what's in it. part of an increasingly unpredictable and dangerously toxic drug supply. So this dealer, Jay, is telling Beth he's got two CBs on his menu. So when he told us that, we were like, okay, and then he told us the price, and they were $25 a pill, and we were like, okay, no. And then he gave us one for free. So, yeah.

Beth and other teens I've spoken to say Jay gives them free drugs to try out. You're also rewarded with goodie bags for every referral. He'll tape a small brown bag of pills like Molly or Xanax to a pack of cigarettes. And these bars these kids are getting from Jay have the Xanax logo, but they have rough edges, like they were pressed in a makeshift lab rather than a pharmaceutical factory. Beth is built a tolerance and is taking up to eight pills a day and feeling sick. When I started realizing I'm like, okay, this is like getting out of hand. My like Xanax addiction, I just kind of ghosted him for three weeks.

he would text me, be like, hey, I miss you, like, what's going on? And I'm like, okay, I'm just not going to answer because I just want to get myself a little break. Then one afternoon, she's hanging out at home, and her friend wants to buy some weed. So her pal texts Jay, and she gives him a location to drop it off. And because he knew that she was caught in my house because of where she was meeting him, he slipped in for Zanix for free in her bag. A gift for Beth. Yeah.

I was like, wow, he's going to, like, give me more right now for free. so I can come back, and that's what I did. I came back. As a kid, Julie says her daughter was a firecracker. She was great at a lot of things, but in baseball, she was phenomenal. In an old video, you see a 12-year-old Beth sporting a helmet, green jersey, and knee-high white socks. My daughter, was a standout. She was absolutely hysterical, funny. But at around 14, she notices changes and suspects Beth is using drugs.

Jeez, you know, like, I was smoked about a pot in high school too. I wasn't too anxious. It was... Julie is wearing a hoodie in jeans. She's in her 50s. She's tough and doesn't suffer fools lightly. So when she finds vapes around the house, she's immediately suspicious. You know, I said to her, we're getting the money for vapes because they're expensive. She goes, we're getting them for free from this guy named Jay. All of us are getting them for free. I'm like, really?

So that's when I knew. That's where my gut, as a parent, understood that this isn't the end. He's not giving these vapes out to anybody for free. There's a reason why you're getting shit for free. Over time, she sees Beth's life unravel. Not going at school, not waking up. mood swings. Then I started to get really, really afraid. I wanted to know more about the man who's stealing drugs to kids. I've spoken to eight

Vancouver area teenagers about Jay. One of them is as young as 13 when she meets him for the first time. We're not identifying them because they fear going public with their names could jeopardize their safety. But they provide a rare window into the secret lives of teenagers. They're recent grads from four different high schools, same dealer. He was about five, eight to five, ten. Pretty big guy, big eyes, very bulging out of his head eyes. Indian. South Asian?

They say Jay looks middle-aged, possibly in his 40s, a stocky man with a tightly shaved buzz cut and a visible scar on the side of his head. and they all describe the same kind of personal service, delivering drugs near their homes and by their schools. A lot of what they tell me isn't a surprise. He catered to a young person in my life, too. A few of them have come together to tell me about their experiences. That's crazy.

They pull up text messages, recalling dates and other details. Everybody loved Jay. Everybody, like, everybody love Jay, like, completely so. Like, I know people in North Van who knew him, West End, New West, Surrey, North and South Burnaby, everywhere. Like, I've called him and he's been in Chilliwack. So he, like, got around. When doing his drop-offs, Jay often shares details about his life. He really made himself seem like he was a very humane person and, like, oh, I'm sorry, I can't make it today.

I got a family barbecue. Like, it's Mother's Day, like, and I feel like that kind of blinds you to the fact that he's selling drugs to underage people and children. And children are ruining their lives. But at this point, he's their plug. They're safe source. They're even believing he's looking out for them. He assures them his drugs are clean. He was a really good shepherd, and we were his sheep.

That's how it felt, because he had so many of us. Michael Lewis here. My best-selling book The Big Short tells the story of the build-up and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. A decade ago, the Big Short was made into an Academy Award-winning movie. Now I'm bringing it to you for the first time

as an audiobook narrated by yours truly. The Big Short's story, what it means to bet against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, is as relevant today as it's ever been. Get the big short now at Pushkin.fm slash audiobooks, or wherever audiobooks are sold. After more than a year of buying drugs off of Jay, things get scary for Beth, and she decides to confide in her mom. I'd had a bad high. I was, like, not feeling good. It was like a school day, and I was just like, yeah, I've been, like, doing Xanax.

It was like being in the center of a cyclone and not knowing where the office was. which was. And, you know, in that experience that she had with the Xanax that she thought she took, and she started going on the nod and throwing up and knew she was in trouble. And then she said, I phoned him and asked him. Did you put anything in this stuff? And of course, he denied it. Police have seen the items in front of you. This includes... Just before Christmas in 2022, the Vancouver Police hold a news conference. ...counterfeit OxyCocet, which is a generic version of Percocet.

Inspector Phil heard the officer in charge is standing behind bags upon bags of white pills, powder, and guns. Fentanyl, methamphetamine, MDMA, or ecstasy, benzodiazepine. They say the counterfeit percocets are laced with fentanyl. Drug testing services are also finding traces of fentanyl in some of the Xanax. He would show us, like, scans and reports saying they were clean. A lot of them weren't, though. A lot of them were fake, or they would be old reports and not the new stuff that he was giving us. But he would show us reports to when you're that young and don't really know any better.

You believe it. And then, at the end of the school year, in 2023, word starts to spread about a fatal overdose. It was a big thing, and Jay was kind of who they would get their pills off of. At least some of them. But they definitely got their percassette and their Xana. off of him. He's talking about a young girl in Burnaby, a suburb east of Vancouver. We ended up finding out one day at the end of school, like last period before everyone had gotten out, that this girl who used to go to school with everyone had basically been found,

dead on her floor, overdosing on a shit ton of substances. The BC Coroner Service reports that since 2019, 137 children under the age of 19 have died due to toxic drugs. And in BC, it is the leading cause of accidental death in that age group. I was terrified all the time. Terrified and angry. But then my number one thing is I was scared she was going to die. And I was, you know, I wasn't preparing myself for her death,

but I was trying to envision what would happen to us as a family if Beth died. It was really traumatic. But I'm like a walk in posse. you don't mess with my family. And I knew I was going to get them one way or the other because I was having dreams of killing them. This is when she makes that phone call to police. But remember, they need details.

So in the summer of 2023, Julie borrows $1,000 from her employer. What I decided to do is I hired a private investigator. I knew even when I was 10 years old that this is exactly what I wanted to do. This is Nathan Helm with a company called Shadow Investigations. It's a family-run business. In fact, he trained with his dad. But of all his years, as a professional private investigator,

he never had a job like this before. This one was unique because it was focused on the drug dealer. But first, Julie has to set up the transaction. That's when she asks Beth for a favor. My mom goes, if I give you some money, can you, like, get some stuff from your guy? And I was like, sure. She claims it's for her aunt. So I had a private investigator in the back alley, and I had a private investigator in the front.

And we just waited. She walked about two blocks away, up some laneways, and then met up with the man briefly along the street. Nathan and his partner watched the transaction go down. At this point, it's getting too dark to get a clear view of the dealer, but they can see his car. Jay hops into a dark gray Hyundai and takes off. He was actually a very aggressive driver, so we were following him at excessive. speeds. The main objective was to figure out, okay, where does he land at the end of the night? But at the end of the night, they lose him. But they've taken photographs of the car and the license

plate. So now, Julie has something and arranges that meeting with the Vancouver police. This guy puts everything in a brown paper bag. Thought he had his fingerprints on the bag, all the photographs of the car, and I submitted him to the two police officers. And the police do track down a license plate. It was registered to a Caucasian fellow who refused to answer the door, and that's as far as they went. I said, that's nothing. How could you accept that? The Vancouver Police confirms they did open an investigation and identified the registered owner of the vehicle in question.

They also say they investigated anyone else who may have had access to that car. but because the information was limited, they weren't able to identify the individual who sold Beth drugs that night. I really don't know why, but I can tell you it was, it broke my heart. I just couldn't bear the idea, though. My daughter could be that statistic.

So I'm in the car one day, and I'm thinking about all this, and all of a sudden I got this crazy idea. And I said, yeah, this might work. She texts Beth when she's at school. You need to call me, right away in capital letters. Exclamation point, exclamation point.

She's like, emergency, I need you to call me now. I said, it's Jay. I said, the police just left our house. And they wanted me to identify the young person that has been doing transactions. And then she was like, the police have like evidence that they saw you do a transactional meet with Jay and they're looking through his chat logs.

Any information they get will be subpoenaed. They have to give it to court, and I'm, like, freaking out. She goes, oh, my God. I said, yeah, I said, you could be in a lot of trouble. I said, you need to delete his number out of your phone immediately. I mean, double delete, everything, all the digits, all the pictures. And it was actually really funny because I was like, she's, she's just trying to get me to quit. And she goes, Mom, I don't believe you.

And I said, here, here's what the police just showed me. And the pictures that I took for the police, I emailed to her and said, this is the evidence they have. And they've got them. And I go, should I tell my friends? She says, tell your friends immediately. So I lied. I did. I lied.

And I don't care of shit. I really don't care. From that moment forward, I guess there was a fundamental shift. And she realized that her life is just bonkers. Just across town 30 minutes away from where Julie's story takes place, There's another family dealing with the chaos that comes with a child's addiction, fueled in part by a drug dealer by the same name, but with a very different outcome. Kids, if Evealina were here today, she would say, don't do drugs.

Wake up before it's too late for you too. Debbie Kernick reads from a letter she recently wrote. Evelyna is the girl who died of a drug overdose in Burnaby. Debbie is her mom. She says writing her thoughts down helps her make sense of it all. Evelyn Baldelli died on June 13th of 2023. She was 16 years old. Her parents and friends tell me it was Jay who had been supplying her with Xanax and

Percocets. I talked to the police and they just said he's going to be replaced by 10 other Jays. Whether it was Jay who provided Evellina the drugs that ended her life, that last night is unclear. At the time of Evelyn's death, the coroner told the family they found high levels of fentanyl in her system, oxycodone, Xanax,

and other tranquilizers similar to Xanax. They also found some cocaine, that and her prescription medication. I have questions for Jay. I found a couple of numbers for him. The customer you are calling is unavailable at the moment. But for now, they'll have to wait. We made multiple requests to the Vancouver Police for an interview.

They declined, but in an email, wrote that although Beth has come forward to the media, she has yet to contact police to provide information that could assist in their investigation. A couple of teens who informed this documentary are now in recovery. The others say they are staying away from hard drugs. Beth is now focusing on staying clean and getting her driver's license. She's finishing up grade 12 while working. a new part-time job. What's really sad for me is that he was like a huge part of my teenage years, huge, other

than my friends, of course, and my parents. And that's like sad to me. And I think that how I feel about him now, it was a massive injustice on so many people. And my story isn't the craziest one. I feel like nothing was done. I'm actually flabbergasted personally when there was so much at risk. Children's lives at risk, their futures at risk, their deaths at risk. These are the most vulnerable people in the lower mainland.

We talk about, you know, people down on the downtown Lower East Side being the most vulnerable. Well, our 13-year-olds and our 14-year-olds are our most vulnerable because they will end up there. Everybody Loves Jay was produced by the current's Enza Uza. Joan Weber from the CBC's audio documentary unit. And congratulations to them because that documentary won a Jack Webster Award for excellence in feature radio reporting since it first aired in December. 26 more young people under the age of 19 have died in British Columbia due to toxic drugs. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.com.

Thanks.