The Social Geography of Drug Use in Metropolitan Los Angeles

This report maps the spatial distribution of drug abuse in the metropolitan Los Angeles area. It uses three major sets of data:

1. household income statistics from the 2000 US census, organized at the census block group level;
2. statistics from drug treatment facilities throughout Los Angeles County, organized at the Service Planning Area (SPA) level; and
3. narcotics arrests statistics from the Los Angeles Police Department, organized at the police community level.

Initially, it examines geographical patterns in the spatial distribution of drug activity. Then, by agglomerating income data to each of these two larger units of analysis, it attempts to identify statistical correlations between socioeconomic class and drug abuse.

Although the report’s findings suggest a higher incidence of drug use in the economically marginalized neighbourhoods of central Los Angeles, it also demonstrates how the available methods of data collection necessarily promote this conclusion. Since enforcement and relief efforts are concentrated in the inner city, both police arrest data and drug treatment statistics tend to under-represent drug activity in outlying upper-class neighbourhoods. The report notes the inherent limitations of these two dimensions of analysis. It calls for improved access to a wider range of drug-related data, in hopes of using GIS to achieve a greater understanding of the problems of drug use.