Drug Addiction. Sociological aspects
Résumé
The major aim of this article is to understand how sociology has considered a recent social phenomenon called drug addiction. This article will not deal with all the areas concerned with drug problems, notably crime and criminal justice (see Weisheit, 1990) or drug control policies (see for instance Musto, 1987) that have become legitimate topics for social scientists. It will relate the history of the principal sociological theories concerning a particular object : drug addiction. In turn, it will discuss the respective concerns and impact of these theories as well as their contributions and failures in understanding this type of deviant behavior. [first paragraph]