City Men Join Drug Fight, Earn Themselves A Living

iVo Ann Arbor men are "doing something" about the drug problem. And that "something" is earning them a living. Clyde L. Kloack and Neil H. Vogt are basically salesmen out of the computer world. T h e i r background, their education, their work experience has been intricately involved with computer programs, punch card operations and scientific marketing studies. Both hold masters degrees in business from the University and both formerly were officers in Com-Share, Inc., of Ann Arbor, a firm dealing in the use of time-shared computers. In 1969 they formed their own company, KVE Inc., a private firm which dealt in computer services from offices in the Huron Towers apartment building on Fuller Rd. But two months ago the two energetic partners came upon a product which fascinated them and which they feit certain they could sell. That product was a "now" item, a timely commodity which is apparently needed in virtually every community throughout the United States. The new article which seized the fancy of Kloack and Vogt was a drug education kit produced by a firm called the Creative Learning Group, a división of Media Engineering Corp. of Cambridge, Mass. The kit includes 35-millimeter slides, instruction booklets, questionnaires and tape recordings all dealing with narcotics and stimulants of all types. There are perhaps a dozen firms producing drug education course materials in the nation today. But few include the tone of authenticity which pervades the Creative Dearning Group teaching aids. "We were sold on it the first time we saw it," says Kloack, who is president of the KVE firm. "It's easy to sell something if the product is real, if it's something you know is good." The course is aimed at the ninth grade level but can be used for both junior and senior high school students. lts strong point is its "source" materials. "Every kid in America has heard sermons and lectures and warnings about drugs," Vogt, a Manchester native, says. "And that has gone in one ear and out the other. But t h i s course includes accounts from kids who have been there. It's pitched in their language, from their peers." The course includes a glossary of narcotic terms and the booklets lay out in simple language the effects drugs have on a human body as well as the effects they do not have. The material tells of the "candy men", (narcotic pushers) the "burn artists", (peddlers who cheat by not delivering drugs which have been paid for or deliver short weight) and the "backtrack" (the drawing of blood up into a syringe to see if the needie has hit a vein when using heroin). But perhaps the course's greatest impact comes from the tape recordings of the narcotic u s e r s who have "been there." One listens with morbid faseination to the 17-year-old girl from the upper middle class white family who has run the gauntlet of drugs and who finally is hooked on a "habit" which costs $70 to $80 a day. ' ' Y o u steal from your friends, from your relatives, from anyone who's got anything which you can sell to get the money for your habit," she says. "You don't have time to eat or to sleep much, it seems you're always standing around in the rain and the cold, waiting for your contact." The father of a teen-age boy tells in plain, everyday language what it's like to discover one day that your son has been hooked on drugs for a year and who looks around for help and can't find it. The drug p u s h e r who makes a "good" living in the trade talks frankly of his business, the pólice officer who investigates and arrests tells about enforcement, the judge who presides at trials and hands down sentences to drug abusers discusses the law. views, the slides, the booklets, one obatins a sweeping overview of the tangled and intricate jungle which is America's drug problem today. It is an overview which Kloack and Vogt think should be presented to Michigan teen-agers through regular school curriculum, by teachers who are interested and aware. "There are very few school administrators in this or any state who won't acknowledge the drug problem in their communities," Kloack points out. "They want to do something about it through their school systems. But many times there are problems." Those problmes include tight budgets which leave little for drug education programs, occasional inertia by school boards or opposition by community leaders. But the KVE exeeutives are convinced that enlightened school administrators in Michigan and throughout the Midwest are anxious to take action in the drug education field. Their accomplishmnets as promoters of the Creative Learning Group materials in the past two months give substance to their claim. Since m i d-D e c e m b e r Kloack and Vogt have contacted more than 100 school administrators in the state. Almost without exception the leaders acknowledged the need of su'ch a program and many have renegotiated budgets to include the Media Engineering Corporation's materials i n this f a 1 1 ' s courses. Washtenaw County Sheriff Douglas J. Harvey listened to a presentation of the materials at a meeting of area officials recently and when it was over said: "I want it." With that Harvey purchased a teaching kit and announced plans to have the course presented to school boards and administrators throughout Washtenaw County. The sheriff, who has completed several national narcotics schools and is pushing for an area-wide narcotics investigation squad, called the course the "best I've seen." Kloack and Vogt will soon have covered schools in the entire lower half of Michigan and have retained a representative to present the materials to school leaders in the norther part of the state and in the Upper Península. This week they made calis on Ohio officials. As time goes on the materials in the course will be updated and revised. The two executives of KVE, Inc., hope the course eventually will be as accepted in schools throughout the nation as is English and history.