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How digital drug users could help to halt the US opioid epidemic

Agent-based modelling offers opportunities to explore the complex social interactions at the heart of the addiction crisis.
  1. Sara Reardon
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A drug addict injecst himself in the street in Philadelphia

Philadelphia in Pennsylvania recorded more than 1,200 overdose deaths in 2017. Adapted from: Jerome Sessini/Magnum

With the tip of her syringe, Brandi pokes at a grey lump of heroin in a spoon. It’s a new variety of the drug that has shown up on the market in the past few days, and Brandi likes it. “I feel this more, I feel more of the pain resistance,” she says.

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Nature 560, 295-297 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05939-8

References

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