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8:30 AM EST Monday, September 4, 2006, Labor Day, a US holiday: Labor Day is the first Monday in September,. The labor movement created it to celebrate the achievements of American workers.

The weekend news was varied. Andre Agassi lost a match and gave his retirement speech. We all cried. A Canadian judge told Conrad Black he was limited to spending $22,650 a month on "reasonable" expenses. And...

Afghanistan's opium harvest is booming:

Afghan poppies.

Read this excerpted New York Times article. Imagine yourself an Afghani farmer. Wouldn't you want to grow the most profitable crop?

Afghanistan’s opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, increasing almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul. He described the figures as “alarming” and “very bad news” for the Afghan government and international donors who have poured millions of dollars into programs to reduce the poppy crop since 2001.

Costa said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country’s prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations.“ This year’s harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium — a staggering 92 percent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 percent,” Mr. Costa said at a news briefing.

President Hamid Karzai expressed disappointment at the results in a statement issued on Saturday and urged the international community to expand its commitment to strengthen the Afghan police and law enforcement agencies. The Bush administration has made poppy eradication a major facet of its aid to Afghanistan. It has criticized Mr. Karzai for not doing more to challenge warlords involved in opium production.

Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium, and 35 percent of its gross domestic product is estimated to come from the narcotics trade.

Most of the heroin made from Afghan poppies is sold in Europe and Asia, drug officials say. “We are seeing a very strong connection between the increase in the insurgency on the one hand and the increase in cultivation on the other hand,” he explained in the interview.

The Taliban had distributed leaflets at night, inviting farmers to increase their poppy cultivation in exchange for protection, Mr. Costa said. There were also signs of a pernicious strategy to encourage farmers to increase poppy cultivation in an effort to force a government reaction, which would then turn the population further against the government, Mr. Costa said.

"The War on Drugs" will never be won while demand is high. If opium and oil revenues are funding bad governments to do bad things against us, it seems to me we should attack demand, not supply. What am I missing?

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