First there was Billy Caldwell, the young boy denied by law the cannabis oil that helped his epilepsy until the Home Secretary had to intervene in person.

Now we read of Lara Smith, a former fencer who once trained with the British Olympic team, whose crippling spondylosis is only alleviated by dronabinol, the principle psychoactive constituent of cannabis. Only with the help of Baroness Meacher, who identified a loophole that lets her import a supply from Holland every three months is she able to get some; at huge cost and painful inconvenience.

The argument about the scheduling of medical drugs is not the same as the one about recreational drugs. The latter has to do with harm reduction or libertarian points of principle, and we can argue that one back and forth another day. It’s not the point at issue here.

The medical case should be more straightforward. You’re not, mostly, weighing issues to do with criminal supply and demand, and the social effects of prohibition or widespread use. You’re looking at which molecules will achieve what improvements when taken under medical supervision, weighed against risks and side effects. But these two separate arguments are tangled up terribly. And the root problem is a cultural one. Cannabis is weed is skunk is a Bad Thing — and for political and cultural reasons rather than medical ones, the discussion is therefore skewed.

The Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, takes a risk, and a brave one, in saying he will look at changing the rules . It’s this bloody word “drugs”; which comes so freighted with baggage, and lumps together so diverse a group of chemicals it is more or less useless as a descriptor.

Drugs are molecules that do something to the human system when ingested (a well-aimed half-brick will also do something to the human system, admittedly, but you know what I’m getting at).

There are very many of them, and they work in very many different ways. But when they are associated, even in their origins, with drugs of abuse, the decision about their scheduling becomes political. Drug-panic kicks in.

As Michael Pollan’s new book on psychedelics, How to Change Your Mind, shows, trials of psilocybin and LSD in the Forties and Fifties showed hugely promising results in the treatment of serious psychiatric disorders. But a moral panic to do with their association with the counterculture helped kill even scientific research off for half a century.

"The argument about the scheduling of medical drugs is not the same as the one about recreational drugs"

Same with cannabis: getting your medical THC from cannabis is a Schedule One no-no while “dronabinol”, which contains the same stuff and does the same thing, is Schedule Two – and poor saps in need of it can get it, but they have to travel every three months to Amsterdam with a note from teacher to do so.

If you have the Home Secretary having to write an emergency licence for a severely epileptic child to get the drugs he needs, and that only after a public outcry; if you have a peer of the realm having to help a disabled woman through a pettifogging legal loophole while you can get heroin over the counter in Boots... then you have a drug policy rightly described as “cruel and pointless” . I hope Mr Javid stays brave.

Disruptive influence outside classrooms

Those worried about the over-reliance on testing in the education system will have more to chew on soon. It’s reported that by 2020 what’s been nicknamed the “tantrum test” for four-year-olds will be universal, the rationale being that the ability of a child to regulate his or her emotions is a strong predictor of academic performance further down the line.

As well as testing vocabulary and basic counting, the “baseline tests” are expected to address issues such as “Most days will lose temper”; “Wanders around aimlessly”; “Not able to sit still” and “Disrupts the play of other children”. (I have the pushy parent’s quiet confidence that my boy will get top marks in all these disciplines and end up Foreign Secretary.)

No question, these things are worth noticing. But you’d rather hope that primary and nursery teachers are doing that, informally, anyway — and adjusting their teaching styles accordingly.

What’s the betting, though, that making it into a universal, standardised cross-cohort dataset has some unintended consequences? Once you get that sort of metric, in that sort of form, central-government fingers tend to get itchy. It’s not the kids whose self-control I’m worried about, in other words.

And you wonder why Carrie was a bit wild

Carrie Fisher’s list of ex-lovers is a codicil to her legacy as an entertainer. First there was the “blimey: Harrison Ford on the set of Star Wars!” moment. Now there’s the “not Freddie Mercury too!” moment. Plus the news that Fisher woke up starkers in bed with David Bowie, having taken so many drugs that she didn’t know whether they’d done the wild thing.

The dismaying detail? Her mum had taken her to a party thrown by Mick Jagger while she was 17. What did Debbie Reynolds think was going to happen?