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The point is, the trade has been around a lot longer than this article tries to imply. I believe the roots for what you see now were established in the early years of the Rock & Roll era.

I have kept in contact with my Hoosier best man from my first marriage occasionally for all these years. He became addicted after he lost a leg in a car accident and is a functioning addict all these years later. As a matter of fact, he’s a world renowned sculptor specializing in public art. He doesn’t do heroin anymore but is active in the Narc-anon movement and he’s where I get my information. A person who’s been in the trenches for many moons. It breaks my heart to read his letters. Even though he is worth more financially than I, I would not trade a minute of my life for his, but he can’t say the same.

Exactly. Drugs go in and out of style along with fashion. In the music clubs during the Grunge era, it was heroin. (Nirvana, Mother Love Bone, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Alice in Chains... all had heroin casualties). Whether it had to do with economics or availability or what, I don't know, but it became stylish to look like a junkie, even if you weren't using. (Remember Kate Moss and how upset the feminists were about her "heroin waif" look? Even Cindy Crawford complained about the styles back then, saying, "I looked like Baby Huey wearing that stuff.")

After - how many deaths? River Phoenix, Kristen Pfaff, Shannon Hoon, Bradley Nowell, Jonathan Melvoin… the list seems endless - it finally went out of style. Then it was ecstasy. Then crystal meth came into fashion. After that, it seemed to be pills. And now it has circled back to heroin again and already claimed a celebrity (Philip Seymour Hoffman). This article makes it sound like the whole of suburbia just discovered heroin and that's just not true.