Home // SIMUL 2014, The Sixth International Conference on Advances in System Simulation // View article
Authors:
Georgiy Bobashev
Eric Solano
Lee Hoffer
Keywords: decision making, drug use modeling, drug switch, agent-based model, model-based survey
Abstract:
In rural areas availability, price, and legal consequences can force some drug users to switch between primary drugs of choice. For example, as a consequence of stricter law enforcement policy in rural Ohio we observed a shift from methamphetamine use to heroin and prescription opiate use. We propose a polydrug agent-based model that describes drug users interconnected in a network. Behavior rules are based on our ethnographic research. The drug selection mechanisms are dictated by drug liking, drug availability, drug cost, perception of health and other life consequences, perception of potential punishment and pressure from the peers. The model produces time series of users’ choices of one or concurrent drugs. Modeling and ethnographic data collection are interlinked i.e. model results lead to the improvements in quantitative measurements, which in turn improve the model. Polydrug trends are of particular interest to policy makers because short-term interventions can lead to long-term adaptation.
Pages: 281 to 285
Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2014
Publication date: October 12, 2014
Published in: conference
ISSN: 2308-4537
ISBN: 978-1-61208-371-1
Location: Nice, France
Dates: from October 12, 2014 to October 16, 2014