Summaries are presented for four grants awarded in fiscal year 2007 under the Joint Initiative for Research on Retail Drug Markets, which is a collaboration of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in an effort to integrate epidemiology with behavioral and economic studies of the composition and dynamics of drug markets, with a focus on methamphetamine.
One of the four grants addressed the "Dynamics of Retail Methamphetamine Markets in New York City." This study used Internet recruitment and respondent-driven sampling in interviewing 132 methamphetamine users, buyers, and sellers in New York City in a social network analysis. The second study summarized examined "The Dynamics of Methamphetamine Markets: A Systematic Approach to the Process." This research was based on a survey of 1,367 law enforcement agencies, along with WebEx/telephone interviews, using interactive maps with narcotics police in 50 jurisdictions. The third project summarized addressed "Drug Market Characteristics: Antecedents and Sequelae on the U.S.-Mexico Border." This study focused on retail drug markets in relation to drug-use patterns, medical consequences of drug use, and cross-border mobility among injection drug users on the western U.S.-Mexico border. The sample was drawn from ongoing studies on both sides of the border. The fourth study summarized involved "Assessing the Development of Drug Markets Using Bayesian Space-Time Models." In this study, Bayesian space-time disease models of hospital discharge data from 1995-2007 across ZIP codes in California indicated that rates of methamphetamine use were greatest among White and Hispanic low-income populations living in suburban and urban peripheral areas of the state.