In Russia, the majority of opiate addicts died during the "epidemic" of Desomorphine. It's a terrible cheap surrogate, from which they rotted alive. Surely this was also connected with politics, because everyone knew about this problem, but no one did anything for a long time. Regular opiates were almost unavailable, and the ingredients to make desomorphine were readily available from pharmacies and were cheap. According to my estimates, about 90% of drug addicts died because of this. It was a mini-genocide, and it was just about after Bush left.