KEY POINTS:
In the struggle between Otara parents and the tinnie houses, parents were one step forward last night - just by coming together.
About 150 church leaders, school principals, community leaders and parents turned out for what was billed as an "Otara Congress" to back each other's calls to dob in the drug-dealing tinnie houses, seen as the root of the suburb's youth gang problem.
A co-leader of the 274 youth workers, Allan Va'a, told the meeting that while his team ran sports for young people in one Otara park recently, they counted more than 250 cars come and go from a house where drugs were being sold beside the park.
"There were lines up to 13 long waiting to pick up their drugs," he said. "All this is happening while we are playing with our kids.
"We talked to our kids and asked, 'Is this normal?' They said, 'Oh, it's just a tinnie house'. They have normalised it. It's not normal, and we shouldn't make it normal in our neighbourhood."
He said drugs allowed gangs to offer kids money that they could never hope to earn in normal jobs. But parents knew where the tinnie houses were so they could act on it.
A mother who said she was a former drug dealer with one son "in and out of jail for 14 years" and another about to become a lawyer, Ramona Albert-McGaughey, suggested that former drug users could set up a network to counter the drug pushers.
She said people should go to the "head" of the problem - the Government - to seek fewer alcohol outlets, gambling parlours and prostitutes.
Otara Community Board chairwoman Su'a Marguerita Ekepati-Leilua said the youngsters getting involved in drug dealing and gangs were the children of church families.
"Otara is prepared to stand up," she said. "All the families are getting together and standing up to throw away the drugs."
