Why Do Some Countries Legalize Cannabis? (Bonus Part): 'Alcohol and Tobacco Are Worse—Isn't Banning Cannabis Unfair?' Deconstructing the Legal and Governance Fallacy

[Global Cannabis Policy Deep-Dive Series]

• (Part 1) The Bankruptcy of the War on Drugs and the Cost of a Runaway Black Market
• (Part 2) Replacing Criminal Punishment with Public Health Regulation: The Logic of Harm Reduction
• (Part 3) The Lancet’s Harm Matrix, Post-Legalization Backlash, and Thailand’s Policy U-Turn
• (Bonus Part) “Alcohol and Tobacco Are Worse—Isn’t Banning Cannabis Unfair?” Deconstructing the Legal and Governance Fallacy (Current Article)

Whenever cannabis policy is debated online or in legislative chambers, one classic argument is almost always deployed by legalization advocates:

“Medically speaking, alcohol and tobacco cause far more deaths, disease, and domestic violence than cannabis! Why can people legally buy liquor and cigarettes at any convenience store while smoking cannabis makes you a criminal? Banning cannabis is completely unfair—either legalize cannabis or ban alcohol and tobacco too!”

This argument is rhetorically powerful because on purely toxicological and epidemiological grounds, its scientific premise is largely true. Yet when we shift from laboratory pharmacology to real-world social governance and jurisprudence, this “whataboutism” overlooks two decisive realities: historical sunk costs and risk stacking.

In this Bonus Installment of our series, we dissect the “Alcohol & Tobacco vs. Cannabis” debate across three dimensions: toxicology, practical governance, and legal philosophy.

1. The Scientific Dimension: Where Does This Argument Get It Right?

First, intellectual honesty requires acknowledging that the scientific data cited by advocates is not fabricated. If we compare ethanol (alcohol), nicotine (tobacco), and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, cannabis) strictly through the lens of toxicology and public health statistics, alcohol and tobacco are remarkably dangerous substances:

1. Acute Lethal Dose and Overdose Mortality

In toxicology, acute lethality is measured by the therapeutic index (the ratio of the lethal dose LD50 to the effective dose ED50).

• Alcohol has a dangerously narrow safety ratio of roughly 10:1: Consuming ten times the amount of alcohol needed to feel tipsy in a short window (e.g., binge drinking) can directly depress the respiratory center in the brainstem, causing fatal acute alcohol poisoning.
• Cannabis has a safety ratio exceeding 1,000:1: Because cannabinoid receptors (CB1) are sparsely distributed in the brainstem regions governing cardiopulmonary respiration, fatal respiratory arrest caused solely by an acute overdose of natural cannabis is virtually unheard of in medical literature.

2. Correlation with Violence and Domestic Abuse

• Alcohol Is a “Disinhibiting” Catalyst for Violence: Ethanol directly impairs the brain’s prefrontal cortex—the region responsible for impulse control and rational judgment. Globally, more than half of all domestic violence incidents, child abuse cases, street assaults, and homicides involve perpetrators under the influence of alcohol.
• Cannabis Tends Toward Sedation: While high-THC products can trigger acute anxiety, paranoia, or psychosis in vulnerable individuals, most cannabis users exhibit sedation, muscle relaxation, and withdrawal rather than aggressive physical violence.

3. Lethality of Physical Withdrawal

• Severe Alcohol Withdrawal Can Be Fatal: When a heavy chronic alcoholic abruptly stops drinking, central nervous system hyper-excitability can trigger Delirium Tremens (DTs)—marked by severe hallucinations, fever, and grand mal seizures, carrying a mortality rate of 5% to 15% if untreated.
• Cannabis Withdrawal Is Non-Lethal: Cessation among heavy cannabis users causes insomnia, irritability, anxiety, and loss of appetite—unpleasant psychologically, but not life-threatening.

For these reasons, in Professor David Nutt’s famous multi-criteria harm assessment published in The Lancet, alcohol ranked #1 overall in total societal and individual harm—surpassing even heroin and crack cocaine, and ranking far above cannabis.

2. The Governance Dimension: Why Doesn’t “Alcohol Is Legal” Mean “Cannabis Should Be Legal”?

If science shows alcohol is more destructive than cannabis, why do the vast majority of countries (especially across Asia) keep alcohol and tobacco legal while banning cannabis? Are lawmakers simply ignorant of toxicology?

Quite the opposite. When crafting laws, governments cannot look only at chemical molecules in a petri dish—they must confront three unavoidable realities of social governance:

Reality ①: Historical Sunk Costs and Cultural Entrenchment

Alcohol and tobacco are not legal because governments certified them as “safe.” They are legal because they have been entangled with human agriculture, social rituals, and daily life for thousands of years.

From ancient Mesopotamian and Chinese brewing traditions to Greek, Roman, and Judeo-Christian religious rites, alcohol is woven into the fabric of human civilization. Moreover, anyone with fruit juice, grain, sugar, and yeast can ferment alcohol in a kitchen jar at home.

Humanity actually tried the experiment of “Since alcohol is dangerous, let’s ban it!”—most famously during United States Prohibition (1920–1933):

• Via the 18th Amendment, the US banned the manufacture, transport, and sale of alcohol nationwide.
• Within a decade, Prohibition proved an unmitigated catastrophe. Citizens did not stop drinking; instead, organized crime syndicates led by figures like Al Capone grew into billion-dollar empires running speakeasies and bootlegging rings. Tainted moonshine laced with industrial methanol blinded or killed tens of thousands, while police and judges were systematically bribed.
• Ultimately, Washington had to repeal Prohibition via the 21st Amendment because when 70% to 80% of the population already consumes a substance that can be brewed in any basement, the societal cost of prohibition exceeds what the state can bear.

In short, legal alcohol and tobacco are historical “sunk costs”—inherited burdens that governments cannot ban without collapsing social order, leaving taxation, age limits, and indoor smoking bans as the only viable containment tools. In societies where cannabis use remains below 1% of the population, no such historical entrenchment exists.

Reality ②: “Having One Man-Eating Tiger in the Living Room Is No Reason to Let in a Second”

The cardinal rule of public health governance is minimizing total societal harm, not enforcing “equal opportunity” among addictive substances.

Imagine your house already has a ferocious tiger named Alcohol and a venomous snake named Tobacco living in the living room due to historical inheritance. Every year, that tiger and snake maul your household—causing thousands of drunk-driving casualties, domestic violence tragedies, and tens of billions in national health insurance costs for lung cancer and liver disease.

Now, someone knocks on your front door holding a leopard named Cannabis on a leash and shouts: “Look! My leopard is much gentler than your tiger and kills fewer people! If you don’t let my leopard into your living room too, you’re being unfair to leopards!”

Any rational homeowner would reply: “I am already going broke trying to contain the tiger and snake inside my house—why on earth would I voluntarily open the door and let in a third predator?”

Empirical data from North America confirms that legalizing cannabis does not cause society to give up alcohol. Instead, it produces Risk Stacking—and frequently cross-fading (combining alcohol and cannabis, which doubles blood THC absorption and multiplies impairment). Society continues paying the full cost of alcohol and tobacco while taking on billions in new costs from cannabis-impaired driving, pediatric edible poisonings, and youth psychiatric disorders.

Reality ③: The Forensic Nightmare of Roadside THC Testing

There is also a massive practical gulf in law enforcement between alcohol and cannabis:

Because THC is fat-soluble, traffic police face a forensic nightmare after legalization: either let impaired drivers slip through the cracks, or risk penalizing sober drivers who legally consumed cannabis days earlier.

3. The Jurisprudential Blind Spot: Does Banning Cannabis Violate “Equality”?

From the standpoint of constitutional law and legal philosophy, the claim that “banning cannabis while allowing alcohol is unfair” commits two fundamental fallacies:

1. Constitutions Protect Equal Rights for Citizens, Not Equal Rights for Molecules: The legal principle of equality applies to human beings, not psychoactive compounds. A legislature’s duty is to safeguard public order and healthcare capacity based on local social conditions—not to issue “fair-competition licenses” to every intoxicant found in nature.
2. The Arc of Modern Public Health Is Toward Stricter Containment, Not Deregulation: Over the past two decades, the World Health Organization (WHO) and national governments have relentlessly tightened the screws on tobacco and alcohol—through steep excise taxes, graphic warning labels, comprehensive indoor smoking bans, advertising blackouts, and generational endgame proposals. If true logical consistency is the goal, the public health ideal is gradually squeezing the historical harms of tobacco and alcohol down toward zero—not opening the floodgates to additional addictive substances in the name of “fairness.”

Conclusion: Distinguishing Historical Compromise from Inviting New Risk

When we step back from the “Alcohol & Tobacco vs. Cannabis” debate, the takeaway is clear:

Pointing out that “alcohol is more dangerous than cannabis” serves a valuable purpose when it strips away the glamorous marketing of the liquor industry and reminds society that alcohol is a devastating addictive substance requiring stricter drunk-driving and public health controls.

However, using the harms of alcohol to demand the legalization of cannabis confuses an unavoidable compromise with thousands of years of history with voluntarily introducing a new public health risk. For Western nations already overwhelmed by tens of millions of black-market cannabis users, regulated legalization is a desperate attempt at damage control. For societies without that entrenched underground market, recognizing the difference between historical sunk costs and risk stacking is essential to protecting families and public health.

Complete Series Index

• Part 1: Why Do Some Countries Legalize Cannabis? (Part 1): The Bankruptcy of the War on Drugs and the Cost of a Runaway Black Market
• Part 2: Why Do Some Countries Legalize Cannabis? (Part 2): Replacing Criminal Punishment with Public Health Regulation
• Part 3: Why Do Some Countries Legalize Cannabis? (Part 3): The Lancet’s Harm Matrix, Post-Legalization Backlash, and Thailand’s Policy U-Turn
• Bonus Part: Why Do Some Countries Legalize Cannabis? (Bonus Part): “Alcohol and Tobacco Are Worse—Isn’t Banning Cannabis Unfair?” Deconstructing the Legal and Governance Fallacy (Current Article)