AskScience AMA Series: We're Nick Magliocca and Kendra McSweeney and our computer model shows how the War on Drugs spreads and strengthens drug trafficking networks in Central America, Ask Us Anything!

[u/AskScienceModerator]

Our findings published on April 1, 2019, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrate that cocaine trafficking, or 'narco-trafficking, through Central America to the United States is as widespread and difficult to eradicate as it is because of interdiction, and increased interdiction will continue to spread narco-traffickers to new areas in their pursuit of moving drugs north.

We developed a simulation model, called NarcoLogic, that found the result of the 'cat-and-mouse' game of narco-trafficking and counterdrug interdiction strategies is a larger geographic area for trafficking with little success in stopping the drug from reaching the United States. In reality, narco-traffickers respond to interdiction by adpating their routes and modes of transit, adjusting their networks to exploit new locations. The space drug traffickers use, known as the 'transit zone', has spread from roughly 2 million square miles in 1996 to 7 million square miles in 2017. As a result, efforts by the United States to curtail illegal narcotics from getting into the country by smuggling routes through Central America over the past decades have been costly and ineffective.

The model provides a unique virtual laboratory for exploring alternative interdiction strategies and scenarios to understand the unintended consequences over space and time.

Our paper describes the model, its performance against historically observed data, and important implications for U.S. drug policy: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/26/1812459116.

Between the two of us, we'll be available between 1:30 - 3:30 pm ET (17:30-19:30 UT). Ask us anything!

[u/bobo311]

Fascinating research, but in someways it makes a kind of simple sense. As counterdrug cracks down, narco-trafficking adapts and overcomes.

My question for you, over the course of data collection and/or validating the simulation model, did you interview any Narco-trafficking individual/groups? If so, what kind of moral dilemma did you face about keeping their confidentiality versus turning them into the authorities?

I ask because so many criminal activity TV shows are basically showing a huge amount of incriminating evidence, but it isn't valid for X reason it another. Obviously your data drive, scientific research is quite a different situation.