Read It Later Reviews #79 – Twice As Bright, Sparkle Date Me, “Special” Delivery, The Bounce Test, Shut Up · 7:06pm Jun 27th, 2017
Back in April, I started on a set of Read It Now reviews. I ended up reading a couple stories for it, and then forgetting I had started a review set and never finishing it.
Today, as I went to read some recent stories, I realized that I had an unfinished review set, and as it wasn’t really quite timely, I merged it into this.
The other stories here consist of a story I’ve put off reading since 2014, an Estee story about Flash Sentry and his special talent, and a story by Bad Horse that came out in May and I somehow managed to miss being posted.
Today’s stories:
Twice as Bright by Cloudy Skies
Sparkle Date Me! by Wintermist
”Special” Delivery by Horizon
The Bounce Test by Estee
Shut Up by Bad Horse
Twice as Bright
by Cloudy Skies
Romance, Comedy
52,160 wordsCelestia likes her routine. Tax reforms, grants, laws and construction projects are all a princess needs to be content.
It's just her luck that for Pinkie Pie, "content" is not nearly enough.
Why I added it: Cloudy Skies is a good writer.
Review
Princess Celestia is generally pretty content with her life, even if she is a bit of a workaholic. She enjoys her work, but with Princess Luna back, there’s a lot less of it. She is starting to resort to taking work from ponies she’s hired to do various things in order to keep herself busy.
After hanging out with Twilight and her friends at a party, Celestia is invited to come hang out with them in Ponyville, but ultimately ends up burying herself in work so that she does not have to risk some novel, unknown situation. But Pinkie Pie won’t be having any of that, and decides to bring the party to Celestia in Canterlot – regardless of Twilight’s protests that they shouldn’t be bothering the princess.
At Luna and Pinkie Pie’s urging, Celestia is drug out to more events with Twilight and her friends, while Pinkie Pie shows up to have fun with Celestia, whether or not Celestia is ready for her. After all, while Celestia smiles a lot, she could smile a lot more, and a lot deeper, all the way down to her hooves – and Pinkie Pie wants to see that.
Twilight and her friends are starting to notice a particular fixation on Celestia by Pinkie Pie, though, and after Celestia notices it as well, Pinkie Pie eventually decides that she totally wants to go on a date with Princess Celestia. But Twilight urges her to think it over first. After all, she is the princess…
This is something of a crack ship – Celestia and Pinkie Pie, really? – but Cloudy Skies does his best to make it work. And there are certainly a lot of interesting ideas in here – the idea of Twilight being protective of Celestia (maybe even jealous of someone else spending time with her), the idea of Celestia being a bit of a workaholic but not the bitter kind but the kind who likes working to the point where she sometimes finds work she doesn’t need to be doing, the idea of Pinkie Pie disrupting Celestia’s routine and being interesting because she barely seems to see Celestia’s crown (well, other than it being shiny) and just treats her like any other pony, the idea of Celestia taking out Pinkie Pie on something of a formal test date to see how she deals with spending an evening by the side of a princess in a formal setting…
I liked a lot of these elements.
I just don’t feel like it ended up coming together for me.
This story really had two central things that bothered me. First, the conflict in the story is low key almost to the point of nonexistence. Twilight is worried about Pinkie Pie getting too intimate with Princess Celestia, but that conflict didn’t feel like it had much in the way of real payoff – I never really felt like there was even a mini-climax about the resolution of that, and ultimately Twilight’s feelings always felt kind of vague to me. Likewise, the “conflict” in the date is just Celsetia putting Pinkie Pie in a formal setting and Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie. It is very low-key and, again, doesn’t feel like it had a ton of payoff, just sort of a kind of uncomfortable conversation.
And indeed, this was sort of a problem with the story in general – it wasn’t just a lack of conflict, it was that what tension the story created with these just sort of felt like it deflated. It never really felt like it had strong ups and downs as a result, the story just sort of ending up kind of flat on the whole, running at a certain level without huge deviations from that, no high peaks or valleys.
The second issue was that I never found myself really buying into the main ship. All of the ideas were there, and I actually thought that they were great ideas. But in the story itself, I just didn’t get emotionally invested in it. The ideas were there, but the way the characters actually acted, I just didn’t feel a strong attraction between Pinkie Pie and Celestia. I never felt myself cheering for the ship, and it never really felt like I understood from an emotional perspective why they were dating. The story tells me why it should work, but it never made me feel it.
A third, more minor quibble is that in the third to last chapter, three characters are introduced to Pinkie Pie as Celestia’s friends, but they get very little characterization and felt like they served little actual role in the story beyond “Hey, Celestia has friends around Canterlot.” This felt kind of weird, as it pulled my attention away from Pinkie Pie and Celestia just as they’re going on their date, and ultimately that attention was kind of wasted because they served no real purpose in the story.
That’s not to say the story was bad – it wasn’t. Pinkie Pie’s internal dialogue is fun, and Celestia works pretty well as well. I thought it was an interesting characterization of Celestia, and not one that I see so often – it is nice seeing a story like this where Celestia is who she is because she wants to be that person. All too often shipfics seem to want to trap Celestia in the princess role, but here she embraces it – she likes being Princess Celestia.
There were some fun moments with Pinkie Pie, and I really enjoyed Pinkie Pie’s thought processes at the start of her date with Princess Celestia. Pinkie Pie can be a fun pony to look out through the eyes of, and while this was a particularly nice and forgiving Pinkie Pie whose feelings are very difficult to hurt, it was a fun version of her.
But the heart of this story was the two characters coming together, and on that, I just wasn’t sold, and without tying me into that central thread, my attention was often trying to stray away from this piece.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Sparkle Date Me!
by Wintermist
Comedy, Romance
14,510 wordsIt's not easy to go back to your life after a thousand years of insanity and exile. It's not easy for Luna to even leave her room. All the same, there's a special somepony that Luna desperately wants to get closer to, and that's worth facing the outside for. All she has to do is get up the nerve to talk to her.
Why I added it: It was featured.
Review
After a thousand years away from Equestria, Luna still struggles to fit into society. Ponies don’t know how to deal with her. Her attempt at socializing in Ponyville was something of a disaster, saved only by Twilight Sparkle. She has no real friends.
And so she has latched onto Twilight and the letters Twilight writes, and has come to slowly but surely realize she loves Twilight Sparkle.
There’s just two problems – Luna is absolutely terrified of asking out Twilight, and is terribly socially awkward.
This is a romantic comedy about Luna trying to ask Twilight out, eventually managing to ask her to go out to dinner with her… and then failing utterly at making Twilight realize that it was supposed to be a date.
Parts of it are really nice – the bits about Luna slowly growing to love Twilight from afar are actually pretty sweet, and are well-written and nicely put together. It seems like a plausible thing for Luna to latch onto Twilight in this manner, and her wanting to read Twilight’s letters, and being touched by Twilight being so kind to her despite barely knowing her, fits together pretty nicely.
And I have to say, Luna as a character here works pretty well. Her old timeyness and her social awkwardness work well, and we also see Luna trying way too hard to be poetic, which seems like something that would work well for her character – her trying to be overly formal in her courting, and also making overblown romantic statements while constantly fretting over them not being good enough and possibly being several steps too far at the same time.
Other parts of the story are very silly. Luna’s repeated attempts at asking Twilight out are kind of silly, though the introduction to the story – where Luna completely freaks out – is kind of out of the blue, and makes the story seem like it is going to be very much stretching her character.
Interestingly, while this story does so at first, it gradually relaxes on this, and Luna, over the course of the piece, gradually returns to being less comically exaggerated. Her repeated fleeing from Twilight gradually transforms into general social awkwardness around Twilight, and the latter feels more normal than the former does.
This stretched my suspension of disbelief a bit, and there’s also a bit of tonal dissonance in this story at time – romantic comedies can be hard to write properly because the romance and the comedy can create sort of a sharp rubber banding effect, as you go from one to the other, sweetness to silliness. The date gets drawn out by a lot of gags, but it also contains some sweet parts, and the two don’t always go together very well, sometimes jerking the reader back and forth.
The thing is, though, the humor generally works pretty well. Some of the gags are pretty funny, and there’s a few brick jokes thrown in here and there which amused me.
But the piece as a whole at times feels a bit tonally inconsistent, as if it is not quite sure what story it wants to be.
I also have to admit I had my suspension of disbelief stretched a few times by Twilight remaining clueless even in the presence of an overwhelming number of clue sticks, including the fact that Spike seemed to know full well what was going on and seemed like he was going to say something before Luna fled on one occasion – something I don’t know why he wouldn’t say, given he said half of it before Luna ran off.
However, this story’s strengths ultimately outweighed its flaws. It isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t have to be to be entertaining. We get a good idea of why Luna would want to ask out Twilight, we get some funny stuff distributed throughout the piece, and we get the catharsis at the end of Twilight finally coming to understand why Luna has been so nervous the whole story.
Recommendation: Worth reading if you like TwiLuna.
“Special” Delivery
by Horizon
Comedy, Drama
4,983 wordsWhen Spike starts exhibiting symptoms of drug use, it's time for Twilight Sparkle (and her M.A.R.E. pamphlets) to stage an intervention.
If only Spike's drug use was Twilight's biggest problem.
Why I added it: I blame Horizon.
Review
Spike seems to be high. On marijuana ash, a horrible, toxic, mind-affecting substance. She’s very disappointed in him, and wonders where she went wrong… until she receives a letter from Princess Luna about SUPER IMPORTANT PRINCESS BUSINESS which has a rather distinctive odor to it.
So she goes to chew out the other Princesses for getting Spike high by sending him a letter.
This is a ridiculous comedy story about why it is totally necessary for the princesses of Equestria to light up a blunt every once in a while. It is dumb, and I suspect that the very subject matter will be offputting.
That being said, though, there’s a number of pretty good laugh lines in this. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy really shine in their brief appearances, Twilight freaking out and citing D.A.R.E. M.A.R.E. pamphlets at people while worrying about being a bad mom to Spike is funny, there’s a running joke about Queen Chrysalis which works quite well, and the actual explanation is at least mildly amusing.
That being said, there’s some sections of this which veer a bit into “pot is funny” territory, as well as a little preachy bit about marijuana which felt both out of place and factually incorrect about 2/3rds of the way through.
Recommendation: Worth Reading if you don’t mind stoner humor.
The Bounce Test
by Estee
Slice of Life
25,871 wordsHe's been reassigned so many times as to have a file thicker than his armor. There are ponies who doubt his ability to cross a room without creating a disaster, and he's one of them. Banishment to the Moon is in fact too good for him. He's the single least suitable member in the history of the Crystal Guard, and history had better be prepared to take on eternity if it's ever going to see him surpassed. Because Flash Sentry starts every morning with a silent declaration of I'll get fired today and goes to sleep on I'll be fired tomorrow.
Or maybe that's more of a prayer.
Why I added it: Estee is a good writer.
Review
Flash Sentry is a bit… accident prone. He keeps getting shuffled from assignment to assignment after some accident, some mishap happens to him or around him, causing damage. At least no one has gotten hurt… so far. But the Crystal Empire – and being under Captain Shining Armor’s command – is pretty much the last place he could be shuffed off to. If he doesn’t cut it here, he won’t cut it anywhere.
And yesterday, he leaned into a statue of King Sombra that ended up falling over and terrifying some kids in the park.
But before Shining Armor can fire him, something comes up – one of King Sombra’s old laboratories has been found, and it has some sort of magical defense set up around it. Nopony can enter without setting it off…
But how about minotaurs?
Iron Will offers to go in and check out the place. And because he has taken a shine to Flash Sentry for some strange reason, he wants the accident prone pegasus to be his backup. Nothing could go wrong, right?
This is a story about a very hapless Flash Sentry, who seems to be a lightning rod for disasters (appropriate, given his cutie mark of a shield and lightning bolts). He doesn’t even really understand what his special talent is, just that his mark sometimes seems to talk to him, tell him what to do. And that’s when accidents happen.
The Flash Sentry here is not much like the one from the movie – he isn’t very confident at all, and in fact, is a rather sorry excuse for a guard in some respects. The other guards avoid him, Captain Shining Armor is angry with him, and he himself is worried about his own aptitude at… well, anything really. But he keeps on chugging along, believing that he will get fired at some point, and then it will be proved that he shouldn’t be a guard.
We get to learn about his mentality, about his backstory, and about what the true meaning of his mark is – and exactly what his special talent is. And that is quite fun.
This story, however, also bears all the marks of the Esteeverse, meaning it is a much darker place than the show. The Crystal Empire was a truly awful place under King Sombra, and this story spends a fair bit of detail going into some of that, and how messed up the place is in some ways as a result. It uses the particular crisis in this as an excuse for worldbuiding, as well as a means of showing more of what the crystal ponies faced. As such, this may be darker fare than some folks might have signed up for – while it isn’t on-screen nastiness so much, the implications are quite unpleasant, and this really feels more like a Teen-rated piece than something which is E for Everyone.
Iron Will – or more accurately, Estee’s version thereof, a minotaur psychiatrist who has been set off on a different path after his encounter with Fluttershy, and in Estee’s verse, is a friend of Princess Cadance – plays a major role here, but he might as well be an OC. He’s not much like the one in the show at all, instead being much more soft-spoken and well-educated, more of a philosopher and less of a bellowing meathead. If you liked the Iron Will in Estee’s other stories, or the one in Vivid Syntax’s Not in Bluff nor Bravado nor Loneliness, you might like the Iron Will you see here.
I think there’s a lot of people who are going to like the core idea here about Flash Sentry and his special talent. If you’re someone who likes the idea of a clever special talent, I think this story might be up your alley.
On the other hand, this story is very much an Esteeverse thing, and is even marked as a sequel to Post Negative Comments Only, whose own worldbuilding WRT the crystal ponies and Princess Cadance’s role there – as well as her friendship with Iron Will – are taken as givens. And as noted above, this is presenting a rather more unpleasant world than the one seen in the show, full of darker things in the past and more damaged people. If that stuff puts you off, then all of that might be a barrier to entry.
For myself, I’ve always liked abilities similar to Flash Sentry’s true talent, and I appreciated the presentation here, even if I’ve seen similar things before.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Shut Up
by Bad Horse
Alternate Universe, Tragedy
2,309 wordsThis is a happy story about Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, and the friendship they had in the magical land of Equestria. This is a true story. I can prove it. This is what happened. This is science. Shut up. Shut up.
Why I added it: Bad Horse is a good writer.
Review
This is not a story for the faint of heart. It also isn’t a story about Equestria. What it really is is a story about what might have been.
The story seems on the surface to be about Wynken, Blynken, and Nod – three humans ponies who totally exist in the world of Equestria, not like they do in real life.
It is actually about four ponies, the fourth, unnamed pony being the narrator. And while the story is, ostensibly, not about him, it is actually entirely about him and the choices he made.
The narrator regrets the choices he made. Regrets the negative outcomes of the actions he took, regrets that things went very badly indeed for most of the people involved in real life, so he rather aggressively tells a story about how things went in the world of Equestria, a better world than this one, even as little hints of what really happened slip through in their statements about things that didn’t happen, and self-recriminations about the things that they didn’t do, that might have changed the outcome in the lovely, magical land of Equestria,
This is a story designed to make the audience uncomfortable, and it does it very well. The narrator’s vociferous denials and the various implications of what did happen, as well as their bitter self-recrimination and their thoughts about a happier world, are all kind of sweet in a way, but also deeply depressing, as while they clearly show regret, they also show that the situation was messed up in all sorts of sad ways in real life.
If you aren’t a fan of stories which are deliberately engineered to make the audience feel uncomfortable, you might want to give it a pass. And if you’re looking for something happy, this is really not the place to look. But if you want to be left wondering just how much of this story is real, and you want a story that makes you feel for the narrator even as you’re left uncomfortable by their words, this is a good piece.
Recommendation: Recommended.
Summary
Twice as Bright by Cloudy Skies
Not Recommended
Sparkle Date Me! by Wintermist
Worth Reading
”Special” Delivery by Horizon
Worth Reading
The Bounce Test by Estee
Worth Reading
Shut Up by Bad Horse
Recommended
And there we go!
It is nice being productive again.
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 193
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 614
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 2121
Five Hundred Little Murders remains my favorite of Estee's works but The Bounce Test came darn close to replacing it.
4584902 ...particularly since they are in the Crystal Empire, Flash thinks his cutie mark talks to him, and he follows what it tells him to do. I just kept waiting on Sombra's horn to pop up at any time, making the whole story a clear violation of "When you find yourself in the haunted house, don't do whatever the voices in your head are telling you."
Thanks for reviewing Sparkle Date Me! First formal review I've had for any of my pieces here, and I was interested to read your opinion on it.
I can see what you mean about the rubber-banding between comedy and romance. The story was originally conceived as purely silly, picturing Luna messing up trying to ask Twilight out, over and over. Once I began writing it, though, I couldn't persuade myself to portray Luna being romantically obsessed with Twilight without exploring why Twilight meant so much to her, when they'd clearly had little contact, and so the more characterful exploration of her motivations grew out of that. It definitely gelled better as it progressed, as the two inspirations found accomodation with each other.
in case you havent heard, cloudyskies has come out of retirement to write another huge, epic story of adventure (and of course romance).
I'm editing for him! ill let yall know when its out! :D
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I realized pretty early on that his talent worked similarly to (spoiler for Piers Anthony's A Spell for Chameleon, though the statute of limitations has likely expired on a 40 year old book) Bink. Bink's talent is that he cannot be harmed by magic. But because his talent would expose itself and make people harm him via mundane means, his talent conceals itself, making seeming coincidences keep Bink safe from harm from magical creatures and other magical effects. Flash Sentry's talent rather strongly reminded me of that, though his is active rather than passive as it acts through Flash's actions rather than contrived coincidences.
Thus I wasn't very suspicious of that particular angle.
Agree to disagree on Twice As Bright (though it admittedly it's been a while since I read it). It's one of the only crackships I've actively enjoyed and told other people to read, but maybe that's a testament to Cloudy Skies' skills as a writer; the points you bring up are all valid.
I hadn't read Special Delivery because it really looked like pot humor for the sake of pot humor, but I did after seeing your review. Nothing grinds my gears more than a pot-smoker that remains willfully ignorant of the negative effects of pot. As if it's some magic substance that can alter the chemicals in your body and will miraculously leave no trace in its passing.
It's basically the opposite end of the spectrum of the idiots that made Reefer Madness, only much less funny.
And yeah, about two lines of being preachy soured me on the whole thing even after the Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy parts had made me largely okay with it.
I know there are plenty of Flash-haters out there, but changing one mention isn't enough to make them go away.
4584943 Yay Cloudy editing buddy!
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high five!
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Whoops. Fixed that typo...
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Yeah, I'd heard. I hope it goes well!
What's the 'Preachy and factually incorrect' bit? 'Non-toxic and they ban it anyway'? Because that's true. I mean, yes, I am well aware that it can cause developmental issues if started in adolescents at moderate/heavy levels, but as an adult? I've spent years looking for any kind of verifiable research and the worst I've found for adult use is 'Heavy stoning can cause impairment, but the effects reverse themselves if you stop using it for a while'.
Which is true. I'll totally have days after a night or nights of getting mad baked where I'm out of it, but a good day of rest sets me back to normal.
There's a few toxic compounds in there, but there's no causal link established between smoking pot and any significantly elevated risk of stuff like cancer - and there are plenty of ways to get stoned that don't involve smoking the plant straight up, like vaping or edibles or or filtering it through a really good bong.
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Marijuana smoke is a suspected carcinogen, as it contains a large number of known carcinogens. A lot of marijuana users use tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs; there is not a large population of people who use only marijuana for long periods of time, so it is difficult to study the long-term effects in isolation, but it is very likely that smoking marijuana, at least, causes cancer.
Smoke in general is harmful to the lungs, so it is unlikely that marijuana smoke is somehow not. It may or may not be less carcinogenic/harmful than cigarette smoke, but it is unlikely that it is harmless. There's little evidence that it causes changes in lung volume in long-term users, but there is evidence it can cause chronic coughs, sore throats, and chronic bronchitis. This is not surprising, given it causes visible macroscopic and microscopic damage to the lungs. People who use vaporizers appear to suffer lesser effects than those who smoke joints. It should also be noted that these symptoms show up at a much lower use rate of marijuana than tobacco.
(Note that different methods of use having different health consequences is also known from tobacco research, so this isn't particularly surprising).
There is also evidence that long-term use causes brain damage, which isn't surprising; most substances which impair judgement are suspected neurotoxins. This was confirmation of the effects in animal studies, which showed long-term use caused brain damage.
It should be remembered that this mirrors tobacco studies, where studies in animals confirmed carcinogenic effects long before it was confirmed in humans.
These effects aren't so surprising either; alcohol is known to cause brain damage as well in long-term chronic users.
Chronic users of marijuana are more likely to suffer from psychotic symptoms than the general population, but it is difficult to tease out cause from effect; are people suffering from psychosis more likely to use marijuana, or does marijuana cause psychosis? Given that it is neurotoxic (and neurotoxins probably cause/make worse psychosis) and that people self-medicate, I suspect that the answer to both questions is "yes", but it is difficult to prove for obvious reasons. This is especially true of schizophrenia.
And of course there are the acute effects and side effects, which are characteristic of consuming a toxic substance.
Big Pot is much like Big Tobacco - constantly lying about the safety and even potential health benefits of their product in order to promote it. It is wise to be deeply suspicious of people who promote marijuana as safe - people did the exact same thing with tobacco. People should really know better at this point.
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I'm in favor of its legalization because I want to deprive the drug trade of money and would like to make more state profit off of it (I voted for its legalization in Oregon), but the idea that it has no health effects is simply not supported by the evidence and is primarily promulgated by people who are proponents of marijuana and have something to gain by claiming that it causes no harm.
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There's a big difference between Big Pot and Big Tobacco, as it were, though.
Tobacco was a huge thing when people started discovering the health risks. It was legal. So there was a ton of massively entrenched very wealthy companies to advocate against medicine.
Pot? It's kind of the opposite. There have been decades of people trying to prove a causal link and they've been unable to do so.
I'm not saying there are no health risks - but just like with alcohol, it's definitely possible to use it on a mild/moderate basis in adulthood without it seriously impacting your quality of life. It doesn't take much looking at all to find legions of people who've used marijuana regularly for decades without any significant deleterious effects.
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I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be legalized.
I'm arguing that the people who are saying that it is harmless are being incredibly deceptive.
It should also be remembered that the alcohol industry itself is not a good thing - roughly 80% of alcohol sales are to alcoholics. Prohibition cut back on its abuse, but it ended up fueling organized crime. The pot industry, like the tobacco and alcohol industries, heavily rely on addicts, with some amount of responsible use.
As far as lack of causal links - the reality is that proving causality is notoriously difficult. The tobacco industry privately believed that cigarettes were addictive and probably caused cancer back in the 1950s, but it wasn't really openly admitted for decades afterwards. Scholarly debate about it continued until the 1980s, and the full effects of tobacco are *still* not known even today, especially marginal use (i.e. people who smoke infrequently, fewer than four cigarettes per week, as well as people who smoke pipes and cigars and vape). I mean, people will claim it was really shown in the 1950s, but all that was shown in the 1950s was that cigarette smokers had a higher death rate than other people - causality wasn't actually proven until a good while after that. Proving correlation - like that marijuana smokers are more likely to suffer from psychosis - is not that hard. Proving causation is much harder.
The idea that it hasn't been linked to this stuff isn't true, though - there is causal evidence at this point for brain damage, as it shows up in both animal models and in humans who smoke large quantities of marijuana. In the most extreme cases, it is about 8 IQ points - people who have been heavily using marijuana since their early teens. The shorter the period you've used it for and the less you use it, the smaller the effect. That's pretty good evidence of causality, as it shows a dose-dependent relationship.
That's about as good as you're likely to get, outside of actually describing the exact mechanism. And there's a lot of things where we don't know the exact mechanism but we do know a causal relationship.
For instance, obesity causes type 2 diabetes. We don't know why it does. There are theories, but we don't know for sure. But we do know that obesity is the major cause of it.
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I don't know the exact numbers but I don't know of anyone on the pro-weed side saying it's completely harmless - but compared to things like alcohol and tobacco? Existing evidence strongly suggests it's far less harmful, yes.
The thing is, we can point to good causal links for stuff like cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, etc. It's far easier to see what abusing those does to a person. Same with alcohol. And yet, with marijuana...apart from 'Yes it can cause cognitive issues primarily in developing brains' - and that is significant, which is why I don't know of anyone advocating allowing teens to use it (And noted in my first response that that was a known risk factor) - I have yet to see any evidence for it causing increased mortality, and we definitely have a lot of stuff indicating the benefits medical cannabis can provide. For example, children suffering severe seizures for whom a properly done medical dosage can be life-changing.
I'm 100% in favor of massively increased research on benefits and risks. But compared to cocaine and alcohol, 'non-toxic' is a pretty accurate descriptor.
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There is no such evidence.
https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/heavy-marijuana-use-in-adolescence-linked-to-higher-mortality-by-age-60
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The evidence is 50 years of trying to establish any kind of causal link has failed to find one, yet they've been able to easily do so with other things like cocaine. If repeated analysis hasn't been able to find any major link, that strongly suggests that what effects, if any, are comparatively minimal.
As for the link there 'A significant link' as we both know could be as small as 'Statistically significant' which could be as much as a 1-2% increase in a cohort that big - and looking at how most seemed accident/etc related in that article, that would seem to go hand in hand with the cognitive decline, ergo the 'Pot use as a teenager is bad', which I have said time and again is a thing :p
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Drugs which have acute toxic effects are much easier to prove are hazardous than drugs which have chronic toxic effects. People almost never overdose on THC (the rise of edibles in recent years is causing an increase in THC ODs, as well as of people mixing THC and other drugs and ODing, as THC can make the effects of other drugs, including alcohol, more severe, but the numbers are still low), so the added mortality is in chronic health problems which mostly show up decades later, as well as deaths due to impairment (marijuana users are known to be about twice as likely to die in automobile accidents as the general population - hardly surprising, given that marijuana impairs driving ability, albeit not as severely as alcohol in isolation).
There are very few multi-decade studies on marijuana users. The one I cited is the only one I'm aware of which has a 40+ year timespan on it. It showed little increase in mortality rates after 20 years, but marked increases in mortality after 40 years - which is the same pattern as you see with cigarette smokers as well.
There's very little research on the chronic effects of pot because it is very difficult to do and reporting on its use is sketchy due to its illegality. If you want to look at population mortality rates, marijuana is not a great subject - use of marijuana with other drugs (particularly alcohol and tobacco) is common, usage reporting is unreliable, and the effects take decades to show up. There are very, very few long-term studies, and this is the longest-term study of which I am aware.
The hazard ratio in the study was 1.4, meaning a 40% elevated risk of mortality compared to the general population of non-users, with a 95% confidence interval of 1.1 to 1.8. Note that this is about the same as the hazard ratio of smoking amongst people of approximately the same age (1.3, 95% confidence interval 1.2 to 1.4).
4593065
That's more sobering info, certainly - though of course, still in the teenager arena.
I'll be curious to see what data comes out given we're starting to have populations one can more openly research on.