Fearing the worst, this B.C. mom hired a private eye to track her daughter's drug dealer

At the height of her daughter's addiction, Julie Nystrom says she started envisioning what life would be like without her child.

She says her daughter, then 17, was hooked on street Xanax and taking up to eight pills a day. She was also experimenting with Percocet, MDMA, cocaine, acid, mushrooms and other illicit substances. 

"It was like being in the centre of a cyclone," Nystrom said.

"The screaming and yelling, the fighting, the not knowing why, and the despair of not knowing where she was or who she was with or if she was OK."

They live in Vancouver, and in B.C. illicit drugs remain the leading cause of accidental death for people under 19, so Nystrom says she was terrified all the time. 

Nystrom knew bits of information about the man who was supplying her daughter's drugs, and understood that he had become a big part of her daughter's life.

"I was so furious," she said, but also felt powerless.

"I saw the deterioration of my daughter. I saw the deterioration of her closest friends. And I saw how gradually terrified they were getting because it's their first time in their lives that they had no control."

Nystrom eventually contacted police — and hired a private investigator to track down the dealer.

Nystrom's daughter, Beth — whose real name CBC News is not using due to concerns for her safety — says she was 15 when she first met the dealer she knew as Jay. No one knows his real name.

CBC News has spoken to eight other Vancouver-area teenagers from four different high schools who were former clients of Jay. Their names are also being withheld for fears of their safety.

They describe him as a stocky, middle-aged South Asian man, possibly in his 40s with a buzz cut and a scar on the side of his head. He dressed much like his young clients, sporting Nike fleece and sweatpants.

They say he sold them alcohol, marijuana and nicotine products. Soon, he started giving them nicotine vapes for free. 

He also rewarded them with what the teens described as "goodie bags" for sharing his number with their peers — small brown paper bags containing pills like MDMA or Xanax.