TY  - JOUR
ID  - eprints1326
EP  - 8
PB  - Nature Publishing Group
SN  - 2045-2322
A1  - Di Clemente, Riccardo
A1  - Pietronero, Luciano
N2  - We introduce a statistical agent based model to describe the phenomenon of drug abuse and its dynamical evolution at the individual and global level. The agents are heterogeneous with respect to their intrinsic inclination to drugs, to their budget attitude and social environment. The various levels of drug use were inspired by the professional description of the phenomenon and this permits a direct comparison with all available data. We show that certain elements have a great importance to start the use of drugs, for example the rare events in the personal experiences which permit to overcame the barrier of drug use occasionally. The analysis of how the system reacts to perturbations is very important to understand its key elements and it provides strategies for effective policy making. The present model represents the first step of a realistic description of this phenomenon and can be easily generalized in various directions.
SP  - 1
KW  - Biological Models; Applied physics; Modelling and theory;   Statistical physics
KW  -  thermodynamics and nonlinear dynamics
Y1  - 2012/07/25/
TI  - Statistical agent based modelization of the phenomenon of drug abuse
AV  - none
JF  - (Nature) Scientific Reports
UR  - http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120725/srep00532/full/srep00532.html
ER  -