Last week a five-year-old child picked up a loaded gun which had been thrown out the window of a car being chased by gardaí through Mulhuddart near the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre. Luckily the child didn’t pull the trigger and nobody got hurt.

But it shows how we are literally skirting the edges when it comes to so called “gangland war”.

Innocent people have been shot dead in botched hits but it is a miracle that there have not been more.

The focus has been on the Kinahan-Hutch feud which has accounted for numerous killings over the past five or six years.

At the centre of all this is of course drugs, and in particular cocaine

But now there are more of these drug gangs emerging, displaying all the attributes of psychopaths.

At the centre of all this is of course drugs, and in particular cocaine. I listened intently to Sunday World journalist Nicola Tallant talking to Eamon Dunphy on one of his recent podcasts about the cocaine epidemic which is not just a Dublin phenomenon.

Cocaine is everywhere it seems. I don’t know anybody among my circle of friends who snorts cocaine but after listening to Nicola Tallant, I probably know people snorting cocaine but just don’t know that they do.

We all do if its prevalence is to be believed. And it is a drug of the middle classes. It isn’t back street down-and-outs that are stuffing this rubbish up their noses. It is people of means.

There is a huge focus in this country on alcohol

Probably the nicest people you could meet. But have they no idea that what they are doing is fuelling terror and murder leading to a five-year-old picking up a loaded pistol on the side of the street last week? Yes, there is a definite connection between the “well to dos” snorting coke off toilet seats and the murder and mayhem that is being visited on ordinary people in housing estates in Mulhuddart and in towns like Drogheda for example.

There is a huge focus in this country on alcohol. Minimum pricing is a good idea. It might encourage people to do their drinking in the controlled environment of the pub where it belongs.

This in turn will lead to reduced consumption since drink is more expensive in a pub and there is such a thing as closing time.

Still we will probably continue to drink too much and so the war on alcohol will continue to the point in some cases where even moderate social drinkers are made feel in some way inferior or irresponsible.

Well what about cocaine use? Why are we not seeing campaigns to shame those among us who are shovelling out hundreds of euros to fund criminal gangs every week to buy illegal drugs? Or are cocaine users above humiliation? We can teach children about drugs. Why not the adults too?

Let’s have a strong and clever media campaign to call out the fools snorting cocaine, to embarrass them and laugh at them for what they are doing.

We all know about the dangers of smoking and alcohol abuse but how many of us really know what cocaine use does to ones’ health, whatever about the funding of criminality?

We all know about the dangers of smoking and alcohol abuse but how many of us really know what cocaine use does to ones’ health, whatever about the funding of criminality?. Let’s see the facts in newspaper ads and bus shelters. In the meantime, the next time you hear or read about gangland shootings in Dublin, remember it’s the brain dead clowns snorting coke in your local town that is keeping these nut jobs in business.

The eternal sport

When Seamus Darby scored that infamous goal for Offaly to end the Kerry dream of five in a row in 1982, a man turned to my father in the Hogan Stand and said, “The GAA will never die”. Laois hurlers win over Dublin last Sunday is the latest proof of that notion.