He was working for the British Broadcasting Corporation but decided to abandon the job to dabble in illicit drug trade in the early 1980s. He remained a drug lord for years and plied the trade between Ghana and many foreign countries such as Italy, Switzerland, the United States of America among others.
Speaking in an interview with SVTV, Mr. Odonkor recounted how he became affluent through the drug trade and imported most of the modern-day luxury cars to Ghana just to show off.
According to him, while he was neck-deep in the drug trade, he never boarded a taxi because he deemed it demeaning of him to be seen in a commercial vehicle.
He disclosed that although the BBC job was not paying sufficiently, it was satisfactory, but in a bid to impress people and lead a flashy lifestyle, he thought it wise then to venture into the illicit drug trade.
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He recounted staring with Indian hemp and served as a carrier for someone to foreign destinations before realizing later that the trade was lucrative.
He then decided to transition from being just a carrier of the hard drugs for others to becoming a dealer himself. He again transitioned from dealing in Indian hemp to cocaine and made a lot of dollars.
However, luck eluded Paa Joe in 1984 when he was busted with 142 tons of cocaine, contraband he described as one of the biggest to have been intercepted from Africa at that time.
He was jailed and when he returned from prison, he said he lost most of his friends and the women with whom he was spending the spoils from the drug trade.
He said he became miserable and went into drug consumption which further ruined his life to date.
The grey-haired old man who has resolved to advocate against hard drug use among the youth said women will always be by your side every minute once you have money, but they will vanish when the money is no more available.
Currently, Paa Joe Odonkor is addicted to hard drug use and survives on the benevolence of others.