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)
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)
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.