I am delighted that my daughter has succeeded in giving up smoking while away in work and personal retreat at Gaia House...not for the first time but she now understands the nature of her addiction and I think it will stick. I have never smoked and never got myself addicted to nicotine. I am very fortunate. But ironically, given David Cameron’s trial by media on his youthful drug-taking, I am less suitable for public office as a result. So much for the humbug of tabloid patriotism and their hypocrisy as they snort their way through the late editions.

The idea of Animal Liberation Fronts is relatively new to western consciousness. A hundred years ago heaven was animal-free and the churches of Jesus were wrestling with the ‘do they-don’t they’ of animal souls. Reincarnation was once on the agenda too until a synod dropped it from the export version of their neo-judaic religion a millennium and a half ago. How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?’ as the great 20th Century Troubadour John Lennon of Liverpool put it.

In 1898 more than a century after Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp and Josiah Wedgwood had set up the Society to Abolish the Slave Trade the idea of freeing people was still in vogue. And with good cause. Because when Heinrich Dreser invented a new substance there was no Huntingdon Life Sciences to test it for him. There must be no bars to the progress of science and so he tested it on the Bayer workforce. They said it made them feel heroisch so he named it heroin.

The heroin brand has prospered in the past hundred years and its raw material opium now constitutes virtually all of Afghanistan’s recordable exports. Everyone is involved...from warlords to the resurgent Taliban to members of the puppet government. Since the two ugly sisters of international lawlessness invaded officially in 2001 Afghanistan has accounted for 87% of world trade in opium.

Writing about the heroin business in The Guardian, Simon Jenkins...my next favourite columnist after Matthew Parris (and Alistair Cooke who died last year)...wrote: ‘Iraq since its occupation has yet to produce as much oil as it did under Saddam Hussein. The US cannot find petrol even for Iraq's cars. By contrast Afghanistan's opium output is breaking all records’. This year's crop will beat the 1999 record of 4500 tonnes. Britain's Department for International Development is ‘in the lead’ on Kabul's drugs policy. The policy has enriched tens of thousands of Afghans tax-free...the victims are on Glasgow housing estates.

When the Taliban were in charge things were different. The regime stopped virtually all poppy cultivation in 2001. Output that year was negligible. Simon Jenkins again: ‘The Taliban's Mullah Amir Mohammed Haqqani pleaded at the time for western aid for distressed farmers, whose income from substituted wheat and vegetables was a quarter that from poppies. But he declared that ‘whether we get assistance or not, poppy growing will never be allowed again in our country’. There is no evidence that this ascetic policy was not sincere’.

Indeed the policy of the Taliban was effective. The price of opium in dealers' warehouses promptly rose tenfold. Had Afghan supply collapsed, production would have shifted elsewhere, assuming demand remained high. But had demand been attacked at just that moment there was a brief window of opportunity to curb the heroin pandemic. There was talk of legalising an Afghan crop for medicinal morphine as with crops in Turkey and India. Instead British and US policy towards Afghan opium after the 2001 invasion was totally cynical.

As part of their dodgy deal with the warlords the invaders turned a blind eye to the 2002 replanting. Since the market for any unregulated global product tends to be near perfect, the prospect of rocketing profits brought an unprecedented acreage of Afghanistan into production. 28 of 32 provinces were instantly under cultivation and refining factories were set up. Europe was soon swamped with cheap heroin. A Glasgow 11-year-old could buy it for £10 a packet. The policy was deliberate.

Meanwhile across the world the Cinderella of international statemanship Bolivia’s Evo Morales is pursuing the policy that the Ugly Sisters refused the Afghans. He is saying ‘No to zero coca, but yes to zero cocaine.’ He is fortunate that the Neocons have no policy for South America. Support Evo Morales and buy his sweater.

My daughter made salad...and salad her way is heaven itself and bears very little resemblance to the collection of vegetables that I put together. I contributed the elixir distilled from the down-trodden grape vines of Southern France. We achieved that elusive delight...quality time and a meeting of informed minds before a roaring wood fire. Professor Leopold Kohr would have been proud of us. We made our own Academic Inn.

Britain’s prison population halved after the Kaiser War and stayed steady at ten thousand until the start of the Hitler War. After that internment has become a habit for the English ruling class. The number incarcerated has risen steadily ever since and now stands at eighty thousand. Throwing open the gates of our prisons will be one of the first things to do after the revolution.