Drug Availability is the Most Important Factor in Controlling Substance Abuse

Citation: Kumaran, V, Ganesh, VV, King, JE, Kiatfuangfung, P, Seah, ZX, Ling, MHT. 2025. Drug Availability is the Most Important Factor in Controlling Substance Abuse. Acta Scientific Medical Sciences 9(2): 47-51.

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Modelling has been commonly used in studying substance abuse and recently, an extensive 11 compartment model with 40 different parameters of single substance abuse has been published. However, there is no sensitivity analysis performed to elucidate the relative importance of these parameters. In this study, we perform a one-factor-a-time (OFAT) sensitivity analysis by reducing each parameter to 10% its default value individually and simulated. Our results suggest that substances/drugs availability to be the most important factor, more crucial than the push from drug sellers and policing efforts. Reducing drug availability by 90% reduces the prevalence of drug users (including active users, users in treatment, and ex-users in remission) by 72.7%. Proportional reduction of contact between drug sellers and susceptible populations results in 30.5% reduction in prevalence while proportional reduction in policing efforts results in 10.6% increase in prevalence. This may have an impact on law enforcement and education efforts.