The ruthless and selfish drive exhibited by people with strong psychopathic tendencies is quite sought after in managers, for example, while there is a pretty clear link between schizophrenic tendencies and creativity.

So, I wonder, what personality traits do you need in order to become a high-rank politician and how strong would those traits have to be to make you stand out from the crowd?

To call the possible link a myth is silly. It’s a respectable scientific theory - it may turn out not to be true, but it’s a serious proposal. There is now a huge amount of evidence that early (adolescent), heavy cannabis use is correlated with a higher risk of psychosis in later life. This is established fact. Now, correlation obviously doesn’t prove causation, but there is other relevant evidence - giving cannabis to already psychotic people makes their symptoms worse, for example.

Personally I’m in two minds about the theory - all the evidence so far could in theory be explained away - but it is a pretty powerful one. For once this isn’t just the Daily Mail creating a scare (although they have, naturally, blown the truth out of all proportion).

The anti-drug perspective gains advantage by mounting a simultaneous barrage of attacks from the health lobby and the crime lobby. Since neither is sustainable alone they work in combination to the same effect, and so until opponents of prohibition learn to conjoin counter-arguments to show the links between criminality and ill-health the ideological battle will remain unresolved.

The solution to ill-health is education and exercise; the solution to crime is toleration and taxation. The taxation pays for the education.

Wasn’t Al Capone imprisoned for tax evasion?