The grim discovery of George Legge's decapitated body in a country lane on the eastern outskirts of Belfast on Saturday morning is only the latest in a series of drug-related crimes that have shaken Protestant working-class communities. Parallel with the loyalist feud which erupted at the end of last summer there has been a series of violent incidents related to the drugs trade in the North which is dominated by certain members of the Ulster Defence Association and their associates in the Loyalist Volunteer Force. A week before Christmas, James Rockett, a UDA man from north Belfast was found beaten and shot to death on waste ground.
His pockets were stuffed with cash. It emerged later that Rockett had been involved in cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis dealing but had become involved in a dispute with other UDA drug dealers. He was planning to leave Belfast and had cashed in the last of his drugs.
Over Christmas a young woman was mutilated and murdered in the Shankill area.
Police sources say this was drugs-related although the victim was not involved in the drugs trade.
The man suspected of killing her is said to be a loyalist with an alcohol and cocaine addiction.
The latest of the recent victims, George Legge, was a former UDA assassin from east Belfast who had become heavily involved in the drugs trade.
In April 1992 detectives questioned Legge about the murder of another UDA man, Edward McCreery, who was killed as part of another crime-related internal UDA dispute.
Detectives suspect Legge recently became involved in a dispute with other UDA figures in east Belfast, again over drugs. His murder involved an exceptional amount of violence.
There was so much damage to the body that an initial examination could not determine whether he had been shot or stabbed.
His killers severed the head, an act which has resonances with the darkest days of the loyalist assassination campaign in north Belfast in the 1970s.
Then, an Ulster Volunteer Force gang known as the Shankill Butchers developed a habit of cutting Catholic victims' throats and, in one case, severed a man's head.
According to loyalist sources, the recent violence flows from disputes among UDA drug dealers and, in some instances, is being fuelled by drug use.
Sources also say that drug use, particularly by members of the UDA's lower Shankill group, contributed significantly to the loyalist feud last year which led to 12 deaths.
The lower Shankill C company of the UDA is said to be heavily involved in the drugs trade. Some of its members are heavy drug users.
One figure, Stephen "Top Gun" McKeag, died last August from a drug overdose.
McKeag had been a heavy cocaine user and was also using synthetic heroin.
Another Shankill loyalist involved in the drugs trade, Frankie Curry, who was shot dead by the UVF on St Patrick's Day 1999 was also addicted to synthetic heroin, which is said to be widely available in some Protestant working-class areas.
The RUC drugs squad has noted a significant increase in drug seizures in recent years.
Heroin addiction is, for the first time in Northern Ireland, becoming a significant problem in mainly Protestant housing estates in north Antrim and north Co Down.