Predictors of Death Related to Drug Use Disorder and Interpersonal Violence in North Africa

Abstract

Fatal interpersonal violence and deadly drug use disorder are serious social issues resulting from criminal behavior, which require effective intervention policies. Prior research on African countries is limited, and the potential association between the two issues, as described in the literature, has not been investigated. In this study, a statistical analysis was performed with R packages to identify factors that predict the death patterns related to drug use disorder and interpersonal violence, and to show empirical evidence for the association between drugs and violence in North Africa. Data on annual counts of deaths attributed to drug use disorder and interpersonal violence between 1990 and 2023 were collected, and a bivariate copula modeling approach was adopted to account for the dependence of the two counts. The findings show that socioeconomic factors, including per-capita gross domestic product, youth unemployment rate, and urban population, are significant predictors of these death counts, and statistical tests show a positive relationship between deaths related to drug use disorder and deaths caused by interpersonal violence.