Preventing drug abuse through social network analysis, a theoretical approach

摘要

Over the last decades scientists interest, from various fields, was drawn by network analysis. Having a large specter of applicability network analysis is now successfully used in social sciences, psychology, biology, health sciences. Is the idea that the human individual is always connected in a network, in a "spider web" that attracts the scientist's interest and offers new perspectives in studying the effects of different social phenomenon.Social network analysis offers, through its methods, new ways to prevent drug abuse and the spread of this phenomenon among young people. Unlike statistics, where an individual is important through its attributes, social network analysis focuses on actors (individuals, nodes) and the connections between them. Network analysis works with matrices and graphs, aspect that helps us understand network in a compact and systematic mode.Identifying actors, their positions inside the network, connections between actors or nodes, similarities in positions and connections, groups and cliques from drug consumers network or even, were is possible from drug addicted networks can lead to the development and the implementation of practical instruments and social and legal measures, that will help us to improve our strategies for fighting drug abuse.