That last story (about an innocent girl whose imprisonment on phony drug charges resulted from an airport search) highlights a longtime concern I've had about the war on terror, and that is that the "War on Drugs" may be its Achilles heel.

The problem with giving authorities extraordinary powers to search citizens for bombs is that there's no clear line limiting their jurisdiction. That's because once an officer has the right to search you for things including, say, a "white powder," (which might be TATP), any other white powder he finds becomes admissible as evidence.

It doesn't take much imagination to see how this can pave the way for a hellish future in which all citizens are subject to search at all times.

Arguably, we may be there right now. To fight terrorism, many citizens are willing to be searched, whether on planes, trains, or buses. It wouldn't take more than one or two suicide car bombers to cause people to willingly allow searches of their cars, too. And with geiger counters pointed at homes, how much more difficult would it be to add computerized drug sniffing devices?

Would Americans tolerate what would be totalitarian police tactics in the fight against terrorism? It depends. I think many of them would.

But throw in the damned "War on Drugs," and limited, quasi-totalitarian tactics can lead to a nexus in which our constitutional freedoms are lost -- a scenario which I think may be a bit too intolerable for most people.

While there may be practical ways to exclude drug law enforcement from the war on terror, I don't see much discussion of it.

In fact, I see precisely the opposite.

From a recent piece in the Christian Science Monitor titled "Terror War Aiding Drug War":

As Congress and President Bush wrangle over the USA Patriot Act, the Border Security bill, and other tools of the war on terror, they may want to keep another law-enforcement group in mind – the nation's drug-fighters.

That's because the war on terror is proving to be a boon to the war on drugs. Drug seizures are up all along the US-Mexico border. Nowhere is the trend clearer than along a desolate 118-mile patch of Arizona desert across the border from the Mexican state of Sonora.

In what is rapidly becoming one of the highest drug-trafficking and people-smuggling sectors along the border, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers there have seized 13,000 pounds of marijuana since Oct. 1, triple the amount captured in the same period last year. That year, fiscal 2005, also set a record. The reasons for the success? Better intelligence-sharing, increased manpower, and improved technology that border officials have received in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks.

For the record, I strongly support the War on Terror, and I strongly oppose the "Drug War."

I wish that certain totalitarian-minded bureaucrats wouldn't keep trying to blur the distinction, as I'd hate to have to change my mind.

UPDATE: This policy briefing makes a good case that the Drug War is actually impeding the war against terrorism in Afghanistan.

As I've argued before, the Drug War is also a great way to turn former allies into enemies.