askchapo

Alcohol production was one of the building blocks of human civilization. Some of the first cities built by humans were built around farms used to produce alcohol. And our knowledge of how it harms us goes back millennia. The ancient Romans knew about alcoholism and would even slander politicians in debates as being alcoholics addicted to wine.

Marijuana, on the other hand, was demonized by cotton companies as they didn't want to compete with hemp. That hemp production also created a drug was icing on the cake they could further exploit. By the 1960s, marijuana had become associated with the antiwar movement and as a drug consumed by black Americans. Reactionaries used this as a pretense for cracking down on civil rights and Vietnam protestors, without violating the First Ammendment. White Americans quickly associated marijuana with liberalism and criminals and the stigma exists to this day.

Remember, Reefer Madness was taken seriously at the time of the film's release. For decades, Reefer Madness and other anti-drug propaganda was the only nonsense people were exposed to about marijuana.

I think the biggest difference is that alcohol is insanely easy to make in comparison to essentially all other drugs. You can literally make the stuff in US prisons with the very selective food items prisoners are allowed to have.

Cannabis for most of history required available fertile land and a specific climate to grow, so it was much easier to stigmatize the substance by stigmatizing the people connected to that land.

Alcohol companies want to sell alcohol.

Tobacco companies don’t want to compete with cannabis.