This is all quite a crock of BS -- the conclusions it draws (the U.S. has more diabetes and heart problems because we drink less than Europeans?) are laughable. Yes, talk to any medical professional and that is exactly the answer you'll find :eyeroll:
Really? Drinking, more often than not, is glorified in the U.S. - every advertisement, every song, every piece of pop culture exalts drinking excessively when it's arguably one of the most toxic drugs in existence
You're crazy if you believe this. Go crawl back into your puritanical hole.
Admittedly it is not as bad a Heroin, but it does more societal damage than any other drug due to its ubiquity.
it's probably about equal to heroin under the toxicity standard fleshed out above, with the qualifier that many accidental heroin overdoses could be avoided were the drug legal and regulated like alcohol, so the user would actually be able to know how much he is putting into his body.
when it comes to harm to third parties, alcohol takes the cake: it makes the user more immune to a sense of risk. most notably this takes form in the flagship alcohol-related crime of our era, the DUI/DWI.