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Previous Research |
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Title: |
Evaluating the Social Structure of a Local Heroin Market |
| Start/End Dates: |
2005 – 2008 |
| Funding Source: |
National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse – DA019476 |
Principal Investigator: |
Lee D. Hoffer |
Research Team: |
Georgiy Bobashev, Robert (Joey) Morris, Joshua Thorp, Mike Agar |
Abstract: |
Researching illegal drug markets in a real world setting is a difficult, time consuming and sometimes dangerous undertaking. But understanding illegal drug markets is more involved than collecting research. While information related to drug markets has been collected there are currently no ways to experiment with market conditions through time to delineate outcomes, relationships, or trends. Furthermore, while research is available on how customers and dealers within local drug market settings behave, the aggregated outcomes of these behaviors are unknown. In other words, no research methods to date have focused on identifying, elaborating, or testing social structures that underlie these markets. Based on an ethnographic study, this project will synthesize the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of heroin dealers and customers with a method that can generate outcomes of those attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors: multi-agent social simulation. By specifying decisions and decision-making processes, in conjunction with environmental considerations, the simulation will, in effect, transform qualitative findings into quantitative output. While merging methods of social simulation programming and ethnography have not been previously attempted, the technology and raw materials (data) are in place for this sort of synergy and the potential benefits of combining these methods are considerable.
Publications
Research link
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A Heroin Dealing Network: Asymmetric Power and HIV Risk |
| Start/End Dates: |
2000 – 2002 |
| Funding Source: |
National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse – F1-DA06016 |
| Principal Investigator: |
Lee D. Hoffer, Stephen K. Koester (Sponsor)
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Abstract: |
This study investigates the relationship between a heroin dealer, his customers, and resulting HIV risk behaviors within the context of a multi-level heroin-dealing network. Since the advent of HIV, a primary emphasis of applied drug research has been understanding individual drug injector's risk behavior. Injection behaviors have been qualitatively described, quantified, and innovative intervention models have been developed to address HIV risks. Less attention has been devoted to research on the environmental, political, and economic contexts in which users live and consume drugs. This proposal addresses the disjunction between these topics. Using ethnographic methods within a case study framework, this research will examine the organizational structure and business operation of a multi-level heroin-dealing network in Denver, Colorado. In addition to understanding how the illicit drug market works, the findings of this research will examine the influence of heroin dealing on HIV injection risk behaviors within asymmetric power relations inherent in a multi-level heroin dealing network. Specifically, the aims of this proposal are twofold: One, to understand and document economic and social exchange between heroin dealers and their customers (i.e. users), within a multi- level heroin-dealing network. And two, to investigate the drug injection behaviors and HIV risk which result from heroin dealing activities and transactions.
Publications
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