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**** Today ****
**** note time 1:30p ****
Lee Hoffer
Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO
Joshhua Thorp
Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM
TITLE: The Illicit Drug Market Simulation project: Combining ethnography &
agent-based modeling
LOCATION: 624 Agua Fria Conference Room
TIME: Wed April 19, 1:30p ***
Lunch will be available for purchase
ABSTRACT
The Illicit Drug Market Simulation (IDMS) project is an experimental study
using ethnographic data as the basis for programming agent-based models
(ABM) of a local heroin dealing network and illicit drug market. Using ABM
to grow a local heroin market from "the bottom-up," the primary aim of the
project is to uncover and experiment with, the emergent properties of these
self-organizing complex adaptive systems. Additional IDMS aims include:
experimenting with policy scenarios intended to disrupt this market, and
developing a formal protocol to combine ethnography and ABM in prospective
research. IDMS data on Denver's heroin market come from a number of studies
funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse published in the ethnography
Junkie Business (Hoffer, 2006). Since the 1950s, the Larimer area of
downtown Denver was home to the cities homeless populations, as well as its
most active "open-air" illicit drug market. To advance urban renewal
efforts, during the mid-1990s, the private sector, law-enforcement and parks
department successfully displaced the homeless and dismantled this market.
Dealers were arrested, public spaces closed and street-people relocated.
However, ethnographic research conducted with a street-based heroin dealing
network revealed how dealers flourished during this era, exploiting law
enforcement tendencies, utilizing drug brokers and capitalizing on new
market opportunities, thereby discrediting the assumption that decreased
visibility equals decreased distribution. Concluding that "closing" the
market only served to transform it, the IDMS project will reproduce how the
heroin market operated, as well as its historic transformation. The project
will also simulate the business operations of the heroin dealing network
researched. Preliminary simulations and experiments will be presented.
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