Examining Drug Use Among Different Ethnicities and Analyzing Its Relationship Across Police Station Boundaries in The Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur and Selangor

Abstract

In Malaysia, the majority ethnicity involved in drug use is Malay, followed by Chinese and Indian populations. The aimed of this study is to identify the relationship between drug use among different ethnicities. Data was consist of drug use, different ethnicity (Malay, Chinese and Indian) from the years 2015 to 2020 which was obtained from Bukit Aman. In this study, spatial data comprising of police station boundaries of Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. According to the findings, the study revealed a positive correlation between a higher population of ethnic Malay individual and an increased prevalence of drug use. Furthermore, the study also found a significant positive relationship between a lower population of ethnic Indian and Chinese individuals and higher rates of drug use. There is no redundancy among explanatory variables. GWR shows that police station boundaries of Sentul, Ampang and Cyberjaya classified as strongest relationship between ethnicity and drug users. In addition, the result of GWR did not improve from a global model of OLS can be attributed to the absence of variation in the standard error coefficient for both models. That is probably why the AICc and Adjusted R2 of OLS model and GWR model showing the same result and not improved. This model provides valuable information for policymakers when developing drug policies and strategies. It helps them understand the geographic distribution of drug use across different ethnic groups and provides insights into the local context and challenges. Government can provide support services for all ethnic groups.