Argentine Drug Chief Tours Center : Acton: Economic resources make rehabilitation of addicts easier in the United States, Claudio Omar Cabrera said while visiting the 309-bed facility.

The United States may be battling a serious drug problem, but the country has an advantage over other nations struggling to help addicts kick their habits.

“You have more economic resources,” Claudio Omar Cabrera, one of Argentina’s top drug officials, said as he toured the 309-bed Acton Rehabilitation Center as part of a two-week tour of similar facilities in Southern California.

Cabrera, a clinical psychologist in Buenos Aires, is chief of the Treatment, Rehabilitation and Re-entry Department of the National Drug Secretariat. The agency was launched a year ago to coordinate local, state and federal programs to prevent and treat drug abuse.

Creation of the secretariat marks a new attitude by the Argentine government towards drug abuse, Cabrera said. In the past, federal officials left most treatment and prevention efforts to private agencies and local governments.

Now the Argentine government is taking a more active role in drug rehabilitation and six months ago started an experimental program for addicts at a facility for juvenile delinquents in Buenos Aires, Cabrera said.

Fully 80% of the 500 juveniles are drug addicts, and 30% of the addicts are infected with the AIDS virus.

“We are facing a serious problem,” Cabrera said. Most of the youngsters are indigents who were abandoned by their families to live on the streets.