Marta Gil LaCruz is a Tenured Professor of the University of Zaragoza, in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Social Psychology.
She explained the perception of risk from a social point of view, indicating that many times risk can involve subjective aspects. The important of the main problems and risks that we perceive in our society changes through time. For example, drug abuse was deemed a main risk during the 1980s, but now it is considered less important than corruption or unemployment. However, drug abuse has gradually increased; it causes deterioration in addicts, their families, as well as in society. Communicating the health risks that can end in deteriorating behaviours can promote prevention policies and can bring encourage funding on them.
She also point out the risk that an equal distribution has depending on the social development. Addiction is affected by social learning and the surroundings of the person involved. Nevertheless, media always put more emphasis on biological aspects rather than in prevention and social policies. It seems that finding a gene related with addiction is more newsworthy than showing that an implementation of a specific prevention programme in a school has shown a decrease in starting drug abuse. Due to this and other reasons, other ways of analysing the factors that dilute the role of the surroundings along with the policies of the moment should be taken into account. A proper analysis of the factors involved would pose a modus operandi in a political and social level. For example, we know that stress is a factor in drug abuse and relapse. It was suggested that stress could be a social factor, rather than individual, which would lead to establishing social health policies taking into account the social conditions of the addict (e.g., place of residence) as well as economic and demographic conditions (e.g., gender or age).
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