From now on, when I say "terrorist," I want you to think of drivers who don't use their turn signal. Yeah. Those guys are terrorists. Or 'N Sync. They fit the definition. They perpetuate violence against civilians (on the one hand that gawdawful music, on the other hand charging their juvenile fans $40 to $110 a ticket). Do they do it for political reasons? Maybe. Who knows what those guys are thinking?

If you hate someone, call them a terrorist. Everybody else is doing it. Palestinians have called Israelis terrorists. Protesters have called America terroristic. I've heard one person say the columnist Molly Ivins wants the terrorists to succeed, just because she's had some teensy disagreement with George W. Bush every single moment of her life so far. And Bush himself has slyly indulged himself with this when he named his budget and tax cuts a "security" measure, covering his own political interests in the cloth of national security. This probably is to be followed by "security pretzels" and "anti-terroristic bail money for the Bush kids."

Now the anti-drug forces have co-opted the term, saying that if you use illegal drugs, you aid terrorists. On a Web site called the antidrug.com, the argument runs like this: According to the Department of State's October 2001 Report on Foreign Terrorist Organizations, 12 out of 28 groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations have been linked to drug trafficking. So if you buy drugs (particularly, hard drugs), well, who knows? Some of that money might be going to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Or maybe just some guy named Mort who lives in Secaucus and has a couple of grow lamps. It's a gamble.

And I'm sure this is true (though I would think there were more than 28 foreign terrorist organizations; when I went to college in 1978, I had at least three in my dorm). Drugs, being illegal, tend to fall into the domain of illegal organizations.

But I could make the same argument for banning everything from precious metals to toasters. Worse still: toasters made of precious metals.

Let's take a merry stroll through the world of money laundering, which keeps terrorists in guns and butter. After shifting the money through various banks, hidden funds are invested in legitimate businesses or commodities: for example (says our State Department in its International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 1997), gold. So if you sell gold in the commodities market, you may be swapping with terrorists. Again, as the specious argument has it, who knows? Launderers also buy consumer electronics for export – especially computers, but also telephones. So don't use those anymore, OK?

But let's address what the sharp reader has been thinking about for awhile now. If a little under half of all terrorist organizations get some of their money from drug trafficking, that means (let's all say it together now) a little over half get it entirely from somewhere else.

For example, there's the People Against Gangsterism and Drugs – credited with nine bombings in Cape Town South Africa in 2000. The State Department thinks they get support from Islamic extremists in the Middle East. That also seems to be the case with the radical Egyptian Islamic group Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (support from Iran and bin Ladin) and Pakistan's Harakat ul-Mujahidin (collected donations from Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf and Islamic states).

Saudi Arabia. Libya. Syria. Iraq. Iran. Even the Congo. What is an even more common factor than drugs, among the financiers of terrorism?

Let's all say this together, too: Oil. We can indict everybody from Dick Cheney to your local gas station attendant.

Mind you, I have no problem with campaign against drug use – particularly drugs derived from the coca plants of Colombia or the poppies of Afghanistan. But the concept of terrorism is getting overused to the point of meaninglessness. Interested parties are rushing to use it as a front for their own agendas. And the word soon may not mean anything anymore.

Except with 'N Sync. I'm serious about that. They're killing people.