[Representations, discourses and practices about drug substitution with opiates. Apropos of a survey conducted in cooperation with 97 French physicians].
In order to analyse the various factors which determine physician's position on the use of opiates in a substitution treatment--as a harm-reducting and heroin dependence treatment tool-, 97 French physicians (i.e. 47 general practioners, 36 psychiatrists, 10 internists, 4 emergency care practioners) answered anonymously 103 closed questions, in presence of a single investigator. Among these 97 physicians, 40 were choosed at random from a list of addiction treatment's practioners, 19 were choosed nominatively for their explicit point of view toward substitution, and 38 were choosed at random from the Herault physicians register. In this latter sample, the survey showed a majority of physicians took an ambivalent position towards substitution, or were favourable without being prescriptors themselves--even though meeting drug users-. General practioners were more favourable to drug substitutes than specialists (50% vs 22%). This practice appeared as legitimate for 70% of physicians; AIDS helped justify this attitude for 26% of the specialists and 5% of the general practioners. Individual or socio-professional factors, the representations of the drug-addict and of his suffering, the perceptions of AIDS contamination risk and the standards of knowledge on the substitution treatments did not differ significatively (p < 0.02) between the groups, determinated according to the expressed practioners point of view toward substitution. Using a method exploring opinion structuration, no description of the typical doctor can be drawn from his position towards substitution. Militant discourses were rare; the main disagreements concerned the status, the negotiation around "the product ... or the medicament" within the drug addict-physician relationship should have. Substitution was considered by some as a mere shift from one object of dependence to another; and to others, as a means of setting up a therapeutic relationship. Ambivalent opinions frequently noticed in the physician's point of view towards substitution appears as a multifactorial phenomenon. Not only does it reveal the physician's difficultie in adapting previous patterns of treatment which are not longer adequate to a critical situation, but it also questions the foundations of the very relationship between the practioner and the drug addict.