>Regardless of this study’s validity, is there really any doubt that abstaining from alcohol is beneficial for the society at large?
Yes, there very definitely is. In countries where it's widely illegal today, there's no shortage of social and medical ills that happen regardless. And you certainly can't arbitrarily legislate or prohibit your way to a risk-free world without including trade-offs. Do you propose the same prohibitionism that worked such great wonders in the war on drugs? Or repeating all the successes of prohibition in the 1920s?
No need to place chemical substances in brackets as if it was doubtful. That's exactly what these alternatives are, just like alcohol.
As for your other points:
1. Irrelevant. The size of the alcohol industry has nothing to do with being able to use alcohol responsibly or its clinical effects. They're separate things.. Also, it's not "normalized" by any modern industry. It has been one of the most normal and popular substances consumed by people since we learned to ferment and then distill millennia then centuries ago. Painting alcohol use as a marketing-induced mental weakness of the 21st century is absurd.
2. Many other substances are only less available because they're less widely popular, this is also separate from a debate about clinical effects.
3. Again, alcohol is historically much more popular. If as many people used MDMA, ketamine, marijuana LSD or whatever else is fashionably fun among some HN comment creators, who knows what social or medical problems might become far more visible. Either way, puritanical prohibitionism and scornful frowning against the one vs the others are more hypocritical than anything else.
4. I definitely don't deny that alcohol can be harmful. How many things would these many other substances be linked to if they were as popular and widely used as alcohol? Not sure, but that was sort of my original point. The science is still tenuous but it doesn't stop some from smugly shitting on one widely popular substance but praising other substances with no medical or other certainty to back up their praise.