There's a few recent documentaries that talk about how cheap and available heroin is in Russia, we're talking only a few years old...
I'm convinced, the very nature of the drug trade makes it very difficult for anyone to get a read on what's actually going on in a particular place...Any statistics about drug use, price and availability are highly suspect and should be taken with a grain of salt...
I love it how heroin and meth have been consistently available and popular in the US for the past 20+ years but every other month some media outlet is declaring a "new outbreak in use" or describing how it's "spreading like wildfire" across whatever region....
Sometimes there's a surplus of a particular drug, sometimes it's more scarce....and out of every new generation of teenagers that come of age, a certain percentage of them try hard drugs...The people who try them as teenagers usually use them on and off for most of their lives...
Aside from the RC thing, I don't think things have really changed all that much. Ecstasy may be more popular among people who are 18-22 now than it was 6 years ago, but go back 6 years before that and it was just as popular and available as it is now, but the idiotic media has to present "molly" as something new...
Reporting new trends that don't even exist, what a way to make a living....