I'm not surprised, most alcoholic beverages are horribly repulsive, both in taste and effect. Cannabis tastes better and has a much nicer effect.
Also, personally I saw more people falling of things and getting wounded on too much cannabis than alcohol. I (from NL) have a friend who smoked a bunch of spliffs before his factory shift and now he has no right arm; he simply dozed off and his arm got caught in the machine. They had to amputate.
However he would if neither. So it's less a question of what's better.
I don't think that's the main reason at all.
More like your reason
What I do know is that the guy in the restaurant drinking at a table 3 feet away from me has 0 impact on my enjoyment, but if someone is smoking a joint 20 feet away with the windows open during the summer it’s gonna hit me hard and smell disgusting.
I thought public cigarette smoking was bad, but the second hand marijuana smell is way worse and for some reason just seems to linger far more than the cigarette smell.
Cigarette smoke gives me an instant headache, and I can smell it a mile a way. I'm not even kidding. If someone is upwind from me a mile away smoking a cig, I'll know about it. And the smoke lingers in hair, clothes, walls, furniture, everywhere far worse than marijuana smoke ever could - I mean, cigarette smoke is pretty famous for fouling up everything it touches, but marijuana smoke doesn't, at least not permanently or long-term.
Many people also quite like the smell of marijuana smoke, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who enjoys the smell of cigarettes.
By other means it's true that it's less harmful than alcohol in average, but there's a big caveat for people with a psychiatric background in their family, as the risk of drug induces mental health issue (schizophrenia) can be very high in that case.
Even then it's not. Alcohol is remarkably bad for you.
That doesn't mean alcohol isn't bad.
I found out, years after deciding to cut back on my coffee intake, that my dose was in that range: when the only thing you drink is instant coffee (as in, not even plain water) and you're making it will multiple table spoons per cup instead of teaspoons…
Not to mention the stench of weed smokers...
For this specific reason, I expect higher variation from weed — though I also wouldn't trust either to drive a car.
Try 6 beers vs 1 entire joint and maybe you're getting somewhere close to equivalence in level of intoxication.
Most people don't smoke an entire joint in one sitting. All it takes is about 3 or 4 puffs and that's typically enough for quite a while. That's the equivalent of about 2 beers. And I'd trust someone more behind the wheel that had a few puffs of a joint vs. someone who just drank 2 or 3 beers.
The kind of intoxication is very different between alcohol and THC. There is no way to do a 1:1 comparison as far as effects on driving ability. They each act on very different pathways, and produce different results.
Marijuana also never made anyone pass out while driving from smoking too much, but alcohol definitely can do that.