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Friendship Networks, Intimacy, and Illicit Drug Use in Young Adulthood: A Comparison of Two Competing Theories

NCJ Number
155879
Journal
Criminology Volume: 29 Issue: 3 Dated: (1991) Pages: 441-469
Author(s)
D Kandel; M Davies
Date Published
1991
Length
29 pages
Annotation
Theories of delinquency posit two opposing views on social interactions of deviant individuals; social control theory assumes that deviants have poor relationships with others, while cultural deviance theory assumes that deviant individuals are similar to nondeviants and have strong ties with members of their friendship networks.
Abstract
To test social control and cultural deviance theories in the context of illicit drug use, descriptive and multivariate analyses were conducted based on information provided by young adult men and women between 28 and 29 years of age. These young adults were asked about their same-sex and opposite-sex friends in general and about three specific close friends. Few differences were founded in characteristics of friendship networks of illicit drug users and nonusers. Where differences were observed, frequent drug users tended to have more intimate friendships than other young adults, which supported the cultural deviance theory. Structural equation models predicting two latent components of intimacy, confiding, and interacting with the three closest friends and same-sex and opposite-sex friends indicated that illicit drug use retained a unique effect and predicted substantially higher levels of intimacy among males. It was determined that strong social ties of adult drug-using males will make it more difficult to develop effective intervention strategies targeting individual male drug users. An appendix contains further information on the study variables and procedures. 81 references, 5 footnotes, and 5 tables