I’m surprised he would say that. He’s usually well informed.
I’ll look for the article. He’s been on this topic for a while.
Perhaps he was referencing some point in a more recent past - the 1950s and 60s perhaps?
As a middle-class, suburban American, certainly I NEVER once heard of ‘acid attacks’ as a thing until I first travelled to Asia decades ago. So it occurred in Taiwan and China as well. Also common was drinking pesticide as a means of suicide, but that’s a tangent.
The point now is I think we can pretty much know “who” is carrying out nearly all acid attacks in the west now.