Alcohol is addictive, physical dependence forming and can be overdosed with no medical use. Are these not attributes of Schedule 1 drugs?
Alcohol has existed and been consumed since before humans existed. It’s also trivially easy to produce alcohol yourself, naturally manifesting out of a sugary liquid, meaning that prohibition is ~impossible.
If you mean just from an effects standpoint than yeah alcohol is absolutely top tier dangerous. But unfortunately/luckily, society operates on more than just statistics. And trying to take the human emotion element out of decisions is hopeless.
Ditto cannabis and opium poppies for example, arguably a million times more naturally manifesting than a distillation process.
Yes, but historically, alcoholic societies thrived and developed much better than stoner societies.
There's a liquor store in every strip mall, every restaurant servers liquor, every concert or sporting event serves liquor.
Meanwhile other drugs are heavily regulated if not outright illegal in most places still
The societies that drank liquor clearly dominated for this to be the case.
Wasn't LSD banned in the US because it got super popular and became a great "poster child" for the war on drugs? Not because it was not popular enough.
AFAIK caffeine, nicotine and alcohol are legal at this point mainly because they've been normalized. As in, people generally perceive them to have minimal risk, so there's not a lot of opposition.
Yes the risk is not actually minimal for any of those three. Even caffeine can be dependence-forming. But most people either don't know this or don't care.
You didnt think this through, Europe was a mongol raided, plague infested, dark-age shitshow untill they discovered tea and coffee. Id we are gonna go by 'drugs drive history' then caffeine is a top tier drug, and alcohol is crap.
But this has all the historifal rigour of "white people won, therefore everything white people do is the best'
So the answer is not the age of the substances, nor the natural occurrence in nature. It's something more irrational. I propose that it's regulatory capture by massive industrial interests. See also: scaremongering against weed vapes by the tobacco industry, or the classic Reefer Madness.
That's a very subjective statement. Many animals seek out alcohol in the wild. For example, bears will seek out fermenting berries and get "drunk."
> drug hardness
There really is no objective distinction between "hard" and "soft" drugs. For example, spend a minute skimming https://www.gatewayfoundation.org/addiction-blog/hard-vs-sof.... "These arbitrary categories have no clear criteria or definition, and they also have no scientific basis"
I am not clear how this proves or disproves anything. Deer seek out mushrooms that are poisonous to us. We seek out coffee beans, whoch are poison to insects but caffeine is fine for us in small doses. Etc.
Also caffeine is a top tier drug.
Technically yes, but that didn't stop marijuana from being schedule 1. Actually, isn't it still schedule 1 in the US?
Hell, even meth can be prescribed by a doctor; I believe the brand for it's called Desoxyn and it's usually prescribed for severe overeating disorders, not usually ADHD.
https://www.dea.gov/drug-information/drug-scheduling
The key phrase is "currently accepted medical use". That is an arbitrary definition that is set by the regulator. A drug must have a medical use that is accepted by the DEA who defers to the FDA for such definitions.