Phone Device Giving Youths Advice on Drug Abuse, Other Problems

Among the brooms and bottles in a janitorial closet at the San Diego Unified School District’s Health Services Department sits an innocuous-looking black box, the size of a large bread bin.

When the telephone sitting on top of it rings, the box clicks and whirs.

“Marijuana comes from a plant known as cannabis . . . There are 421 known chemicals in marijuana . . . The plant has the ability to intoxicate its user. . . . “ a voice from the box tells the caller.

It is the Student Awareness System, an audio computer that offers 100 taped messages on various types of drug abuse and emotional disorders. Installed in September in response to the increasing drug abuse by students, the system averages 150 to 200 calls a day, school officials said.

Initially developed for local Navy personnel by a naval psychologist and the Institute for Drug and Alcohol Prevention, the messages will be available in various school districts nationwide within the month, Charles M. Granger, originator of the program, announced at a press conference Thursday.

Fourteen machines, at a cost of $6,000 each, will be in operation by May throughout Southern California and in the Midwest, Granger said.

“Many youngsters will not talk to a person (about drug abuse),” Granger said. “But they will listen to a computer. This allows us to get out honest and up-to-date information. This one thing will not change everything, but the more information people have, the more informed their choices will be.”

New messages are frequently added to the “menu,” Granger said. He is currently completing a message on clove cigarettes.

Each of the systems, like the one in San Diego, will also offer a crisis referral service to its callers.

The computers and tapes, available through the nonprofit institute based in San Marcos, have been donated to school districts by businesses in their area, Granger said.

A push-button phone must be used to access the computer. Code numbers are then dialed for the computer to find a specific message on the tape. The average message lasts two minutes.

A second system was added by the San Diego school district in November to help handle the large number of calls. A third one with messages in Spanish will be installed within a few weeks, said Nancy Siemers, coordinator of the district’s social concerns program. It was donated by San Diego Gas and Electric Co.

“For now, it is the best program,” Siemers said. “It reaches hundreds each day, and it is extremely cost-effective.”

Leaflets about the program were given to all of the district’s more than 100,000 students on the first day of school, she said.

Siemers also answers the crisis line, a telephone number given at the end of every message. She said about two callers per week have called for help after listening to the tapes.

The messages most frequently requested have been the ones on marijuana, cocaine, depression and suicide, she said.