Alcohol is so odd. By virtually every metric, it is or is among the worst: narrow active/lethal window, high absorption rate, high addiction potential, high physical harm, high societal harm, and an almost diabolical ability to nerf motor skills while simultaneously reducing risk perception and overestimating skill.
If you objectively listed ethanol's effects on paper without the name, people would clamor to ban it. Yet we all know how that went over. And the fact is societies largely coexist with it. It should be the poster child for how sensible drug legalization won't cause western civilization to crumble.
It was a very interesting experience when I visited a psytrance festival a few years ago. During the first half (weekdays) it attracted different people, who just didn't seem to care for alcohol. When I arrived it took a while to notice, but I could spot maybe two or three beers in the crowd? Of course many people were on all sorts of drugs (but many also perfectly sober).
People were high, spaced out, suddenly worshipping a tree, or whatever, but none of them were loud, annoying or in the way. Not even the guy who had taken this drug (I'm not sure what kind) that makes your jaws go all tight, something that I associated with aggression, but he was having a great time and being nice.
When the weekend came, a different sort of people arrived, who did like to drink alcohol during the shows. And the difference was just huge.
Suddenly when there was groups of people standing around, some of them were yelling or seemingly unaware of their voice loudness. It was nothing bad of course, "normal" behaviour with alcohol, expected. But the contrast with people partying to their hearts' content, just without alcohol, was immense.
People were in the way, and stumbling around unpredictably. And I don't mean people that were very drunk, it was only half way the evening. It was just the aggregate effect of adding some ethanol/beer into a large crowd on a festival, but the difference was absolutely striking.
And then think about this crowd has been on all the other drugs in the days before, but then ethanol arrives, and the entire atmosphere on the festival just changes.
Cannabis is nothing like that. I mean just imagine the same situation a few days without and then with cannabis :) It wouldn't change hardly anything (especially if they had been consuming other stuff) and if anything, I expect an increase in giggles and quietness ...
It also reminded me that before that festival I had almost always been consuming cannabis and ethanol at the same time. I don't really do that any more.
If you objectively listed ethanol's effects on paper without the name, people would clamor to ban it. Yet we all know how that went over. And the fact is societies largely coexist with it. It should be the poster child for how sensible drug legalization won't cause western civilization to crumble.