the story is that cigarettes are well researched and documented to cause agressive lung cancers, heart disease and many other problems. the story on alcohol is much less clear and even if true, much lower risk
Compare this to ~5% of cancer related death attributable to alcohol use.
It's just not even an accurate comparison.
To be honest though? I am willing to bet that cost to healthcare system for alcohol related illness is outpacing that of smoking related illness. Cirrhosis of the liver is a very costly disease when it gets close to end stage.
but of course the vast majority of people that drink on saturday night do NOT end up in A&E.
What? Afaik alcohol is pretty well known to increase risks of several cancers in population. Individual response to alcohol is of course a much more complex topic with genetics affecting a large palette of physiological and neurological responses to alcohol. For populations - alcohol is a health risk. For individual - the narrative is far more nuanced (more risk for some than others etc).