Homegrown ecstasy is making its way out of B.C. in shipments of tens of thousands of tablets squirreled away in hidden compartments in cars, planes and even submarines, a former dealer says.

Alberta police said Friday that a sixth recent death has been tied to PMMA, a neurotoxin that has been turning up in the ecstasy sold on the streets of Calgary and Metro Vancouver. Mounties are trying to determine if the deadly pills originated in the Lower Mainland, which has long been known as a major source of the party drug.

Former ecstasy dealer Jason, who asked CTV News not to use his last name, says it's likely the lethal drugs came from B.C. He used to make shipments of about 50,000 pills at a time to Calgary.

"There's many ways: hidden compartments in a car, or you could put drugs in, say, a can.... You put it in and you seal the can, and then it's labelled tuna or fish or whatever," he said.

He says he also sold to Edmonton and Seattle, where there was a huge demand.

Even though the U.S. border is tightening up, the drugs are still getting through, and Jason says that's thanks to dealer ingenuity.

"Now they have better ways of hiding it in cars, but hiding in cars is pretty much old school. Barely anyone does it," he said.

"They fly it -- they have submarines that take it for bigger drugs."

The tablets are traded for whatever the dealer needs: money, weapons or harder drugs like cocaine and heroin.

The big business of ecstasy has had a huge impact in B.C., where the battle for a place in the market often leads to violence.

"What scared me the most was stabbings, being threatened, threatening people's family, kidnapping people -- I've seen all that," Jason said.

Mounties say organized crime is the primary source of ecstasy produced in B.C., and it is sent out to contacts all over the world for huge profits.

"We've had reports of it being exported to the Philippines, Japan. We are a source supply for this drug," said Burnaby RCMP Sgt. Scott Rintoul.

"Today, ecstasy's a stock -- it's a stock to invest in. It's a hot commodity right now, and has been for the last 12, 13 years."

But the booming industry has claimed more than a few victims along the way. B.C. saw 16 ecstasy-related deaths in 2011, according to the chief coroner, and another three people have died after taking the drug so far this month.

Five of those deaths have been linked to a PMMA, a hallucinogen that is considerably more hazardous than MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy. It can cause seizures and elevate body temperatures to dangerous levels.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Michele Brunoro