In a time of civil war or insurrection or ethnic violence or whatever you want to call what's been happening in Northern Ireland, ordinary "law-enforcement" tends to take a back seat. There's been an enormous upsurge in the amount of poitin-making, just to mention one illegal substance.

Lox's conspiracy theory, like a lot of conspiracy theories, gets cause and effect the wrong way round. If there are more drugs in Northern Ireland that's more an effect than a cause. That would apply even where the paramilitaries get involved in it as a way of raising cash, the same as it is for the bank-robberies and such.

As for religion- it's not "about religion" - noone's shooting each other about points of doctrinal difference. It's about a settler people disputing territory with the native people, and it just so happens that the settlers had a different religion, as has often been the cae elsewhere as well. And as in any war, the people doing the fighting vary when it comes to whether they keep up with "their" religion.

But I imagine you'd find as high a proportion of sincere Catholics or Protestants in the various paramilitary as you would in American armed forces, or the British armed forces. Christians have never found it hard to find ways of justifying the wars they fight.