The Current - Chaos in Colombia fuels deadly cocaine problem in Labrador

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Cocaine use has exploded in Sheshatshiu Innu First Nation, with deadly consequences for the small community in central Labrador. In his documentary Pure Hell, the CBC’s Ryan Cooke looks at how chaos in Colombia has unleashed an avalanche of unusually pure cocaine, upending the drug trade all the way to Canada’s North.

1942, Europe. Soldiers find a boy surviving alone in the woods. They make him a member of Hitler's army. But what no one would know for decades, he was Jewish. Could a story so unbelievable be true? I'm Dan Goldberg. I'm from CBC's personally, Toy Soldier. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, it's Mark Kelly here. You might know me from my regular gig as co-host of the CBC's The Fifth Estate.

You'll be hearing more from me when I fill in for Matt as he crosses the country talking to Canadians about the election. I hope you tune in, and please enjoy the current podcast. Residents of a small community in central Labrador are warning about what they're calling a cocaine crisis. Shehashit, Innu First Nation, far, far north of the province's capital city, has seen an influx of strong lethal cocaine in the past year and they're not alone.

Police and drug experts say the situation on this inner reserve is a consequence of the booming coke trade, a global industry thriving in the shadows of the fentanyl crisis. This is the CBC's Ryan Cook with his documentary, Pure Hell. This is the CBC's Ryan Cook with his documentary, Pure Hell. In the last two years,

27 people died from drug-related deaths. That's a huge number for a small population of 2,000. We don't want to keep seeing our people die because of drugs and alcohol, you know. And you know, our people are hurting. From the snowy streets of Canada's northern reserves, to the tropical waters off the coast of Columbia. People are going to extremes in order to provide for their family. In the shadow of a fentanyl crisis, cocaine has exploded. Everywhere you see it, you get more violence.

This is the story of an avalanche gaining momentum. The people being dragged under and those fighting to slow it down. I'm just tired. I'm tired of this. I go to bed thinking, I pray that everything is going to be okay tonight. okay tonight. Mary-Ann Panashue is an artist. But these days her studio is filled with incomplete works, waiting for the inspiration and the time to be finished. Moments of peace like this are hard to come by.

I'm tired of, worried for my children. I'm worried. My children. I'm worried. I'm just worried, constantly worried. Mary Ann and her husband Peter Panashue raised four children on Shajid Innu First Nation in Labrador. Now they're busy raising their grandchildren, as their kids work on themselves. Now they're busy raising their grandchildren as their kids work on themselves. One is in jail and that's also related to cocaine. And the other two are in recovery. And there's only one child that's okay.

And that's not a very good record. And we're not the exception of the families that are experiencing this in the community. It's the exception. All the families that are experiencing this in the community, it's the rule. Peter invited us to visit Chez Gite this winter to see firsthand how cocaine is changing their community. The first thing you see when you come into the town is a billboard. It's 20 feet high, showing a little girl

with her head down, shoulders sunken. the sign says drug dealing hurts. peter makes a few turns and then slows down. so this house in the grayish color is the house we bought for ben and now it's a drugstore. Windows boarded up. So if you're looking for cocaine that's where you go and buy it. The Panache Way's got this house on the reserve for their son in hopes that it would help him get back on his feet.

Instead they say it was traded for cash and cocaine at the depths of his addiction. And suddenly it was becoming like a drug house. That's where they sell cocaine and they got themselves barred right in. And I was so frustrated and then, you can't burn the house down, and we're like, what are you gonna do, right?

Peter Panashue is a long time protester, former Innu Grand Chief, a federal MP, and a cabinet minister under Stephen Harper. But politics and peaceful protests weren't solving this problem. So one day last March, Peter Panashoway picked up a crowbar. Tonight, a former MP from this province is arrested for taking the law into his own hands. Peter Panashue is facing a criminal mischief charge after a long simmering dispute boiled over in Shahajit. The target of Peter's ire was Jeremy Andrew, the man now living in Ben's house.

Andrew was the deputy grand chief of Innu Nation when he was in his 20s, but that was 15 years ago. And residents here now say he's one of a handful of people that sells drugs in the community. And so one morning last March, Peter went to the house and told Andrew to get out. I told him, I said, if you don't leave within half an hour out of the house, I'm breaking this car and all the other vehicles that are here." And so they moved the skidoos, but they left the car there. And I said, well, at 10.30 am, I'm breaking this. And on top of that, I put it on Twitter and I put it on Facebook. And I said, watch how quickly they arrest me. Watch how quickly the RCMP gonna show up to arrest me.

And yet they're not doing anything about the drug trafficking that's taking place here. And it was about 10 minutes. Police showed up after I broke the windows. And I got arrested that quick. A video of Peter's arrest was posted on Facebook, prompting hundreds of comments quickly. A few hours later, we got a call to the CBC newsroom.

It was Jeremy Andrew. — He was saying there were seven drugs in the house, which is completely false. That is not true. And he's just making up stuff. There's no proof. There's nothing to say to him. There's any cocaine or anything. Andrew denied all wrongdoing,

but seven months later, the RCMP came knocking at that gray house with the boarded up windows. Well now to Labrador, where 17 people have been charged with drug trafficking as a result of Project Beehive. Jeremy Andrew was charged with drug trafficking as a result of project B-Hive. Jeremy Andrew was charged with drug trafficking last November. Police seized cash, meth, heroin, even nitazine, a strong synthetic opioid, from a number of

houses in Shejit and Happy Valley Goose Bay. But there was something about the cocaine that they found here. Something that caught even the most seasoned investigator by surprise. Deep inside the RCMP headquarters in St. John's, Inspector David Emberley reaches inside a locker. He takes out two bricks encased in cardboard and covered in tape. Sometimes we see him in a vacuum seal bag. I've seen them done in black rubber, but most of the time, from my experience, they're done in tape. A kilo like this used to be a rare find for Emberley's team, but not anymore.

In 2009, when I started in drug section, if we seized a kilo of cocaine, that was a big seizure. Since then, the amount of cocaine that we're seizing has gone up dramatically. And the other thing I've noticed, we're finding guns on almost every search warrant that we do and mostly handguns. And quite often we're finding loaded handguns while we're doing searches. There was a dangerous discovery in that Shajid bust, one that Emberley says can

be just as dangerous as a loaded gun. Everything we seized was between 94 and 96 percent pure cocaine, which is unheard of. So not that long ago, only a couple of years ago, the cocaine that the user would buy on the street, say about a gram, typically would be 15%. But within the last couple of years, we're regularly now seizing cocaine at the street level,

gram level, it's 94, 96%. Emberley says cocaine is becoming more deadly, but not for the reason people might believe. It's not toxic cutting agents or other drugs like fentanyl in the mix. It's that the drug has never been more pure. I think there's a lot of misinformation out there. And you know, I hear a lot in the media and on social media about fentanyl and about, let's say, cocaine being regularly cut with fentanyl. I've been a police officer for 22 years. I've been a drug investigator in this province since 2009.

I have never seized cocaine that contained fentanyl. I'm not aware of cocaine ever seized in this province that contain fentanyl. So we keep hearing in the media about how dangerous fentanyl and opiates are. And they are dangerous. don't get me wrong. But cocaine is also very dangerous. People have a cavalier attitude towards it,

especially now when we're seizing cocaine on a regular basis at the user level, you know, 94, 96%, people are dying on a regular basis from cocaine overdose, just cocaine. The province's chief coroner believes Emberley is on to something. Dr. Nasdenek has been sounding the alarm about cocaine for years and has seen a spike in deaths correlated with the rise in purity. have to know that cocaine is still most dangerous drug and the reason being that we don't have an antidote. It's not Narcan. We have individuals who are dying

on the scene with a couple of vials of Narcan used with no recovery, meaning that they may have fentanyl on board, but they also may have a cocaine. And the cocaine is going to be the substance that's going to kill the individual. When we first met, Dr. Denick led us past a row of coffins along the hallway leading to his office. There he showed us a graph on his computer screen showing annual cocaine deaths. It starts with three in 2014, climbing slowly to 10 by 2020, and then a sharp spike at the end of the pandemic, 33 two years ago and 34 last year. That's an increase of 1,000 percent in 10 years. Denik examines each of these people,

and then he picks up the phone. Those conversations are difficult, because on the other side of that line, you have a desperate next of kin, and you're trying to explain all of this, and they usually ask them themselves, why, and could we have done differently? But it's more frustrating looking at these bodies

of young individuals who are in their primes, thinking about their full life being in front of them, and they're here on my autopsy table. This isn't just a Newfoundland and Labrador problem. Across Canada the numbers are similar. Deaths from stimulants, a class of drugs including cocaine, are actually growing at a faster rate than opioids. Canada now sits just behind the US with the second highest cocaine death rate in the world.

That's according to Dr. Thomas Pichman, who sometimes feels like he's shouting into a void. For many years, it has been almost, I wouldn't say undetected, but it was not spoken about. Pichmann is a researcher with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. He's written report after report, warning the world that these problems were coming. Cocaine production has been exploding in the last couple of years, particularly in Colombia. So Colombia is right now flooding the markets. It's flooding the markets of Europe.

It's flooding the markets in Africa. It's flooding the markets in Asia. And it also goes to North America and here, including Canada. The days of Pablo Escobar may be over, but cocaine's reign of terror continues in rural parts of Colombia. Kidnappings, killings, human trafficking, just a few consequences of the industry. There was hope in 2016 when the Colombian government signed a peace treaty with FARC,

the revolutionary army controlling much of the cocaine trade. But that failed when the government went back on its promises. They told farmers they'd be compensated based on how much coca they'd planted, so they planted more than ever before. When the government went back on its word, there was a record coca crop sitting in the ground. With Fark out of the picture, others stepped up, like the Sinaloa cartel led by El Chapo. Violence resumed and cocaine production skyrocketed, reaching record highs in 2023. Have you ever finished a book and just needed to talk about it

immediately or wanted to know the wildest research an author has done for a book or even what booktalk books are actually worth your time? Hi, I'm Morgan book. Yes, that is actually my last name and this is off the shelf. My new podcast that covers everything related to books. Each Thursday, I chat with other bookworms and authors or sometimes it's just me rambling about my latest book obsession from book screen updates to hot takes on new releases and of course our monthly book club discussions. I've got you covered.

So get your TBR list ready and listen to off the shelf wherever you get your TBR list ready and listen to Off the Shelf wherever you get your podcasts. The rise of cocaine and all its correlated violence and desperation is being felt all along the supply chain. We wanted to see firsthand what that looked like. So we went to the Caribbean and boarded a ship. This is going to be optimal. If we're going to catch anything, we're going to pounce. Today is our day to pounce. We were embedded on a joint mission with the Royal Canadian Navy and US Coast Guard, patrolling the waters between Florida and Columbia. And we found something.

patrolling the waters between Florida and Columbia. And we found something. Flight to NOLF, COI, CIW, over. A US Customs and Border Patrol plane has spotted a small boat heading towards the Dominican Republic. It's not pinging on the radar or reporting its location. Okay, team listen up, this one's a little bit of a different situation than our last hit. Commander Nicole Robichaud jolts the crew into action. This is their second chase in a week. The target will be able to see us and probably evade us.

Fresh off a seizure of 510 kilograms of cocaine. So that's the whole point. We need to get eyes on so that we can run back to the crew and start shooting. So that's what's different. We're not doing a star chase. We're actually ahead of the target at this point in time. A robotic arm lowers a smaller boat into the water. Five Americans armed to the teeth set off in pursuit of the target. The team in the water radios back to the ship asking if the aircraft overhead can see any weapons on the target vessel. Papa 1-6, this is father. Negative, MPA is departed, over. The aircraft has already left the area, leaving the team flying in blind. The bad news continues. We believe that there is water inside the fuel system.

We believe that there is water inside the fuel system. Their boat has lost power. It's floundering in the water. The target is getting away and you can feel the energy being sucked out of the room. But everything changes in a heartbeat. Oh shit, there it is. I see it. Yep. Definitely. 100%. Yep. Visual. I pick up one of our cameras and zoom in as far as I can and I can see a small open boat with what looks like two men on board. They're being pounded by the waves. Their boat is barely moving now. And we're getting closer. closer. With a warship closing in on them, the smugglers appear to make a calculated decision. They've thrown their cargo overboard, forcing the captain to make a split second

decision. Will she keep up the chase in hopes of arresting the smugglers or opt to slow down and recover what could be millions of dollars worth of cocaine? Okay, let's come down in speed and stop our turn. The captain chooses recovery. It's a tough decision that doesn't pay off. Turns out the smugglers threw out decoys. Not bricks of cocaine, but empty gas cans. That one hurt a little bit and I think the entire crew

felt it because it was so close. It was so close. But unfortunately that vessel did get away. But yeah, it hurt. In this part of the ocean desperation often outweighs safety. And that image will stick with me. Those two guys in a boat that I wouldn't take cod fishing. And here they are in the middle of the Caribbean. The crew tells us these traffickers aren't typically hardened criminals. Some are low-level gang members. Others are just vulnerable people who may feel that they have little choice but to turn to a booming drug trade. Some of the drug runners that they've intercepted have said that they were forced against their will.

People are going to extremes in order to provide for their family. It's not easy going and crossing over 200 miles in an open-faced boat with two outboard engines. Most of it in the dead of night so you don't get captured and then underneath the tarp in this filtering heat so once again you don't get captured you don't get seen and it can't maybe see it now but it's not always calm in the Caribbean like it's not always a glass it's kind of rocky. So it's extreme for what people are doing in order to go and make a living or to provide for their families. Back in Shajit, I can't stop thinking about something the UN researcher Thomas Peachman

told me. We talked about an unbroken line between the pain felt by farmers in Colombia, to those risking their lives in the Caribbean, to the humanitarian crisis at the US-Mexico border, all the way north to remote communities like this. We're invited to see that pain firsthand. In an old building alongside a frozen lake, 30 people are settling in for the first night of an eight-week program. This is Apnam's camp, an addictions treatment center for people from Shazhi. For a lot of folks here, this isn't their first attempt at recovery, but some say that this time feels different.

I've never felt the way I did in the past year. The way it's made me feel. The cold care just makes me suicidal. It just drives you. The counselors here all have first-hand experience with addictions. Like Trinity Medus. She says the drug problem in this region is the worst she's ever seen it. We don't want to keep seeing our people die because of drugs and alcohol, you know.

And, you know, our people are hurting. And this is, they use that to escape their pain, you know. They think that's the only way out. You know, that's all they know. Several people have come up to us since we've been here to talk about the problems that they've had with drug dealers. Infiltrating narcotics anonymous meetings, pulling people back into addiction to line their own pockets, and threatening anyone who goes against them. Apnum's camp director, Kristin Sellen, has had enough.

We have 10, 11 and 12 year olds injecting needles. We're at epidemic proportions. It doesn't seem that even though 90% of us can identify who the dealers are, nothing seems to be done with them. And I think that if we're really saying that youth are important, then we need to be doing something. I commend Peter Panashuei for the stand that he took. I think more of us as parents need to do that. After taking us to visit their son's former house, the one that they say was traded for cocaine, Peter and Mary Ann Panashuei want to introduce us to someone else. for cocaine, Peter and Mary Ann Panaschoway want to introduce us to someone else. Are you interested in meeting Maisie?

Who? Maisie. Our granddaughter. Oh, your granddaughter. Yeah. We pull up to her daycare and head inside. Papa! Papa!

Papa! Papa! Papa! Pick me Papa! Papa! Papa, pick me up. Pick me up. Life for the Panache Ways has been exhausting lately, but the smile on this four-year-old's face reminds them of what they're fighting for. Bye, Papa. My Papa kissed me! Papa kissed me! Papa kissed me! My papa kissed me!

I want my children, my great-granddaughter, to be safe. That's what I hope for, for all of my grandkids and our great-granddaughter. And I hope people who want to see the community change that are living here, I want them to have courage. Not to be afraid, because it's for our kids. That documentary, Pure Hell, was produced by the CBC's Ryan Cook with help from the audio documentary unit.