O.C. Lawman Finds Focus on Drugs in Latin America : Tour: The sheriff’s chief of operations sees ‘abuse as a major issue’ in Panama and El Salvador, which are looking into U.S. prevention programs.

Despite civil war and intense poverty, drug abuse among schoolchildren is as much a concern in Panama and El Salvador as it is in the United States, a top county Sheriff’s Department official said on Tuesday.

“It’s in the top five” concerns, said Dennis W. LaDucer, the department’s chief of operations. “Drug abuse as a major issue.”

LaDucer, who returned Saturday from a weeklong trip to the two Central American countries, said officials there are looking into several U.S. anti-drug programs, including his department’s Drug Abuse Is Life Abuse campaign.

At the invitation of the U.S. Information Agency, LaDucer traveled to Panama City and San Salvador to meet with heads of government and leaders of anti-drug programs there. The invitation was part of the federal agency’s American Participant Program, which focuses on international drug abuse prevention programs, rather than better-known interdiction programs.

Although there are no statistics available to describe the drug abuse situation accurately in those financially strapped countries, LaDucer said, he learned that most drug users there resort to marijuana, a cheap substance relative to cocaine and heroin.

While in Panama, LaDucer met representatives of the Comision Nacional Para la Prevencion, Rehabilitacion y Estudio de la Drogadiccion, he said. The organization is looking into a Sheriff’s Department-sponsored text for elementary schoolchildren, called “Positively Know Drugs.”

In San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital city, LaDucer met with Atty. Gen. Roberto Mendoza and Capt. O. Pena, head of the country’s national police anti-drug squad, he said.

He also met with Alexandra Hill, executive director of Fundacion Antidrogas de El Salvador, which recently received a $2-million grant from the federal government to develop drug prevention programs.

“These countries are enthusiastic about reducing the use of drugs among their population,” LaDucer said.