> and alcohol is certainly as bad as cocaine or heroin.

statistically speaking alcohol isn't even in the same league as any other drug. it ruins and kills more people than any other drug period. it's highly hypocritical that we as a society are accepting of it (and glorify it), yet we shun e.g. marijuana. just look up the numbers they don't lie... (ftfy)

> [alcohol] ruins and kills more people than any other drug period.

Since the subject is how good or bad the substance is, the relevant figure would be the number of people it ruins or kills, divided by some measure of how many people take it and how often they take it. The number of people who take alcohol is much greater than the number who take illegal recreational drugs, so we would expect many more alcohol deaths even if all drugs were biologically equivalent. I think that, on the correct metric, marijuana would beat alcohol hands down (that is, it is safer), but I'm less certain about heroin or cocaine. Do you happen to know those numbers?

(for the record, I am in favor of legalizing all drugs)

Unless you're using statistics measuring effects per capita of the population using each individual substance, the alcohol vs other drugs discussion is a arguably pretty massive turn into "my personal rant" territory. There is a ton of bad data in this area based on decades of willingness to believe the absolute worst results are 100% correct. More scrutiny has begun to reveal the social impact of particular drugs is much more nuanced than previously considered.

Stopping to re-evaluate the data leads to better outcomes. Such as the correlation between decriminalisation of canabis and a reduction in drug related crime. The same as we saw with the repeal of prohibition and the reduction in the need to bootleg for something society broadly decided was "fine". If the social contract between government and the governed breaks down so far that you have public wilful disobedience of a law, then it's unlikely that you can imprison enough people for breaking that law to ever stop the inevitable change to those laws.

Not trying to make personal rant but just speaking from much personal experience I was replying to a comment (and agreeing) that if we (as a society) are going to be ok with and accept ethanol as legal, it's highly hypocritical. Ask any drug counselor, rehab worker, or social worker which drug is the most devastating to society and you will find that alcohol compares to none. Is it because it is more widely available? Yes I'm sure that has something to do with it and that's what I wanted to point out. It's also often misunderstood how dangerous alcohol is compared to other drugs on a physical level. You can do all the heroin in the world and when you quit, you will feel like you're going to die but most likely you won't. However if you quit alcohol you are likely to go into grand mal seizure and potentially die. anyways now I am ranting and could go on and on.. but yeah I agree it's biased because alcohol is legal, my point is just that we shouldn't make other drugs illegal if one of the worst ones is legal.