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San Francisco's Drug Geography

lmart999.github.io

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Re: San Francisco's Drug Geography

#2

Post by dmix »

http://lmart999.github.io/assets/drug_agg.png

Looking at this chart and being a bit assumptive, is it safe to say crack use has declined and meth has increased?

Maybe meth isn't really a new epidemic with a new user group, crack users just transferred to meth. Basically, those looking for cheap escapist drugs targeted at the very poor have moved onto a new product.

I'm curious which one is worse for society and the users?

Re: San Francisco's Drug Geography

#4

Post by lqdc13 »

dmix wrote: post #2

http://lmart999.github.io/assets/drug_agg.png Looking at this chart and being a bit assumptive, is it safe to say crack use has declined and meth has increased? Maybe meth isn't really a new epidemic with a new user group, crack users just transferred to meth. Basically, those looking for cheap escapist drugs targeted at the very poor have moved onto a new product. I'm curious which one is worse for society and the u…

I am not sure if there is an increase in meth use. Last couple of years look roughly the same as 10 yrs ago in absolute amount.

Re: San Francisco's Drug Geography

#6

Post by ihaveajob »

This is an awesome exercise in data visualization. It's most striking to see how crack use was essentially flat until 2008, and then it started a steady decline. Looking at the charts, I would venture to interpret that the wave of gentrification following the market crash had the effect of disproportionately displacing crack users.

I wonder what this same study would look like across the bay, in Oakland.

Re: San Francisco's Drug Geography

#7

Post by j_baker »

dmix wrote: post #2

http://lmart999.github.io/assets/drug_agg.png Looking at this chart and being a bit assumptive, is it safe to say crack use has declined and meth has increased? Maybe meth isn't really a new epidemic with a new user group, crack users just transferred to meth. Basically, those looking for cheap escapist drugs targeted at the very poor have moved onto a new product. I'm curious which one is worse for society and the u…

Meth is quite possibly the most dangerous drug in existence. It's cheap. It's almost as addictive as heroin. It makes people aggressive, impulsive, and even violent for hours.

Now, don't go trying to convert meth-heads to doing crack. They're both very harmful.

Re: San Francisco's Drug Geography

#9

Post by valleyer »

j_baker wrote: post #5

Maybe I'm just obtuse, but this graph makes no sense to me: http://lmart999.github.io/assets/cluster_gis.png What exactly do the colors mean? And what do those brackets at the top and at the side mean?

The colors are to normalize the different districts. The darkest color is always the most prevalent drug in that precinct, and the other colors in that column are relative to that drug.

The brackets are presumably an explanation of how the "clustering" was done, though with such a small data set it could have been done manually.

Re: San Francisco's Drug Geography

#10

Post by GeneralMayhem »

dmix wrote: post #2

http://lmart999.github.io/assets/drug_agg.png Looking at this chart and being a bit assumptive, is it safe to say crack use has declined and meth has increased? Maybe meth isn't really a new epidemic with a new user group, crack users just transferred to meth. Basically, those looking for cheap escapist drugs targeted at the very poor have moved onto a new product. I'm curious which one is worse for society and the u…

Only partially. The total number of meth incidents (light blue, top chart) looks like it was up a little bit in 2014, but by nowhere near as much as the drop in crack, and is down in the last few bars. Meth has grown proportionally, but only because of the drastic decline in crack and heroin.
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