PETER HITCHENS: We claim to worship the NHS but refuse to protect it from its worst enemy...us

Are our authorities actually trying to make the whole country ill? We treat 'our' NHS with religious awe but we design a society which is bound to fill its beds and corridors, and swallow up all its funds.This week the BBC trumpeted a report claiming that people who took up vaping were more 'successful' at giving up smoking than those who used nicotine patches or gum.What twaddle. I threw a shoe at the wall at the stupidity of the claim. People who inhale vapour instead of smoke have not given up smoking. They are simply smoking in a different way. This is just as revolting to everyone around them. It may in the long run be just as dangerous. We haven't a clue.The most common side effects documented in clinical trials include throat and mouth irritation, coughing, and shortness of breath. There are strong signs that children and teenagers who vape cough a lot. Then there's wheezing, airway inflammation, and worsened asthma. Sounds healthy, doesn't it? The long-term effects cannot yet be known. Tobacco can take 40 years to show its horrible results. I wonder what we will find out about vaping by 2050?Then there are 'antidepressants', pills whose actual effectiveness is far from proven. People who inhale vapour instead of smoke have not given up smoking, writes Peter Hitchens (Pictured: shelves of various flavoured disposable vapes and E-liquids)Once again I recommend the two devastating articles by Dr Marcia Angell on this subject, published in the New York Review of Books in 2011. These questionable drugs can have horrible side-effects, especially when people try to give them up. Yet the Daily Mail revealed last week that one in seven people in England were prescribed antidepressants last year. This is an increase of more than 15 per cent in five years.Then there is 'ADHD'. This complaint was questioned by my colleague Dr Max Pemberton in a recent Channel 4 documentary. His doubts are shared by several well-qualified people. I have tried for years to draw attention to the unscientific, soft, subjective 'diagnosis' of 'ADHD'. But a soft diagnosis leads to a hard outcome. Doctors confidently hand out strong, worrying drugs, which would be illegal if not prescribed. Amphetamines are illegal for a reason. Long-term side effects include aggression, insomnia, impaired memory, high blood pressure, increased risk of heart attack and stroke.And then there is marijuana. Even the most idiotic liberals are beginning to grasp that it is linked to incurable mental illness, a problem we are very bad at treating. Evidence is also growing that its users often also become violent.This conflicts with its smooth 'peaceful' PR image so some refuse to believe it. They shouldn't. Look into the background of any crazy killer and you will almost always find a great deal of marijuana. Yet the authorities continue to do nothing to enforce the very strict law against possessing it. Do they want it to spread? If so, the policy is working.In so many parts of daily life, we either promote – or fail to stop – behaviour which will make people ill. Yet we claim to revere our doctors, nurses and health workers. They'll never be able to pick up all the pieces. Perhaps we should try harder to stop people getting ill in the first place.Bordering on the ridiculous in Ireland So much for the supposed Anglo-Irish love and brotherhood which followed the British surrender to the IRA at Easter 1998. It is actually getting harder for British people to go to Ireland. Look what has happened to the Common Travel Agreement of 1923, which once allowed us to travel freely between Britain and Ireland without a passport.For some time now air travellers to Dublin have been subjected to passport checks. Try objecting to this (as I have) and you get pretty stern treatment.These checks are justified by a rather tricky claim that Irish officials have to verify that arriving travellers are in fact UK citizens, and the only way to do this is to demand a passport. As far as I know, Irish travellers going by air the other way don't have to show passports when they get to London. But now those going by ferry are also to be faced with the same rule, and apparently this works both ways.Odd. So far as I know, the Irish state does not even mark the border between itself and Northern Ireland. You only know you have crossed into Ireland by road because the speed limit signs are suddenly in French kilometres rather than English miles, and the roads have different numbers. Long ago there were Irish customs posts, but the EU put an end to that in 1993, and they did not ask for passports. The Common Travel Area was established to give British and Irish citizens the ability to travel freely between the two countriesMy view is Dublin may officially recognise the border with Northern Ireland, but doesn't do so in spirit. So if you want to go to Dublin without a passport, it's still perfectly possible provided you go through the North.This looks like blatant politics, and rather silly. I have always loved going to Ireland, all of it, and I don't want it turning bureaucratic. I hope we don't behave the same way in return. And let's also hope the SNP don't start getting ideas.Look out! Water is wet and fire is hot Walking past a steep drop the other evening, I was surprised to see that it now has a yellow warning sign saying 'WARNING: Steep drop', accompanied by an unintentionally amusing picture of a stick figure falling down a, well, steep drop.If we really are now stupid enough to deserve this sort of thing, bottles should definitely have 'OPEN OTHER END' embossed on their bottoms.