Artificial intelligence for simulating the drug war

[Coconut]

Hello hello.

A friend and I are doing a major project for our degrees in university. We are constructing a game which aims to simulate, as realistically as possible, drug prohibition, the actions of the state and police and the actions of dealers (as well as employees in the case of cartels). However, this game's only drug will be Cannabis in the first version.

The program will have two modes: interactive and simulated. In interactive mode, you play a protagonist who wants to set up a Cannabis farm. He has pure intentions and wants to make a living by providing his area with a pure, safe product. However, criminal gangs, rival dealers and the police will make life very hard for him. The aim of the game is to stay afloat and alive for as long as possible.

Simulated mode will allow the user to run simulations of drug prohibition in an attempt to easily and empirically prove that it does not work and creates the crime it purports to eradicate.

As such, we are programming an artificial intelligence to control the actions of dealers and police for both modes. This is a very important element.

I'm looking for input, if anyone would like to provide it, on what "laws" this AI should follow. We must be able to prove that these are based on reality.

So far, we have a basic outline of the following (please excuse the poor formatting as this was taken from Google Docs' dodgy text editor):

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6.3.1 Actions of the State and Police

• Once a new drug is discovered by a small group of the general public, its use will spread based on its effects and addictive potential. The greater the exposure this substance receives, the higher likelihood there will be of it being prohibited. Therefore, the more reputation a dealer has, the harder the police will crack down on them.
  
• The legal status of a drug is not based on its potential for harm - alcohol and nicotine, which are extremely dangerous, are legal. Possession, manufacture and sale of substances which have not only been proven to be relatively benign and lacking in addictive potential but in some cases beneficial, are punishable by hefty fines and long prison sentences. Some examples are Cannabis (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, cannabidiol), psychedelic mushrooms (psilocybin, psilocin, baeocystin, norbaeocystin, aeruginascin), Peyote, Peruvian Torch, San Pedro cacti (mescaline), DMT (n,n-dimethyltryptamine), LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) and so forth. However, this program will only focus on the illicit trade of the Cannabis genus of plants.
• Police hold unwavering loyalty to enforcing the law upon others, regardless of its scientific or logical foundation, while not necessarily following the law themselves. This will be incorporated in the form of unannounced, illegal raids on the player's premises.
• Violence and lethality are often used in the enforcement of drug prohibition, especially in response to violence used by traffickers, but often proactively (example: United States Drug Enforcement Administration), which allows the player to be shot on sight during some raids.
• In order to meet arrest quotas, police will frame people for drug crimes by planting evidence. If the police know about the operation through an informant but have no solid evidence for a warrant, they may attempt to frame the player.
  

6.3.2 Actions of Rival Dealers

• • These rival dealers live in a world of violence and crime due to the illegal nature of their careers. They must employ violence to survive or they will be quickly eliminated, so well-meaning and peaceful people (such as the protagonist Cannabis farmer) will have little choice but to become petty criminals themselves. They will use violence to defend themselves from the state and each other.
  • In order to increase profits, they will swindle customers by artificially inflating prices and cutting their product with often inactive but sometimes harmful substances.
  • Are usually not very knowledgeable about what they sell. Will often use technical jargon to confuse customers and obfuscate. Through this it is possible to lie to customers. However, sometimes customers will know more than the dealer themselves, leading to a lost sale and lower reputation.
  • Cartels can be formed by employing people and giving them a share of the profits. Their loyalty must be maintained.
  
  

6.3.2 Key Laws

• Tougher drug laws lead to more crime as dealers are forced to make ends meet through any means. Greed is also a factor as they seek maximum profits and dominance over territory.
  
• Violence on the part of the state will lead to an upsurge in violent drug-related crime.
• Prohibition leads to unsafe drug use and overdose. Impure substances from disreputable suppliers are not accompanied by instruction for correct dosing.
  
• People will have access to drugs regardless of their legality. Prohibition illegality creates a shroud of mystery around substances, inviting younger, more experiment-prone people to try them.

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Any input is most welcome! When this project is finished, Drugs-Forum will be the first public venue to be able to use it, before it is released as open-source.