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The aim of this research was to empirically test the concept of distance to the object (Abric, 2001) as a paradigm of the link to the object in the study of social representations. A questionnaire including beliefs related to cannabis and constitutive elements of the distance to the object (practice, implication, knowledge) was managed with eight hundred people. The results underline the role of the distance on representational dimensions. In the same way, we can note that the various components of the distance operate, independently, on these dimensions. The concept of distance to the object is heuristic to apprehend, by a broader and integrative grid of reading, the link which individuals maintain with the objects of representation.