This is a narrow minded take. I come from a family of Irish alcoholics. Most of the younger generation uses cannabis instead of drinking and avoids the devastation from alcohol that my generation and older experienced.
I'm going to guess that it's easier to get addicted to weed than to alcohol due to price, pleasure, and no alcohol hang over.
Kids especially can get addicted to weed much easier than alcohol in my opinion.
I like alcohol but I see alcohol as a social drug. I never drank it alone. I also physically can't drink it too much due to hang over and complete inability to do anything useful after. During covid lockdowns, I was absolutely addicted to weed after I tried it. It had none of the draw backs of alcohol and even more pleasure in the beginning.
I was addicted for a while. It was horrible. I became unmotivated, fat from munchies, didn't talk to family or friends, always asked people I met if they wanted to smoke weed with me, was high during remote work, couldn't remember anything because my memory got very poor, had horrible acid reflux from all the smoke.
Thankfully I was able to remember what life was like before weed.
If you read https://www.reddit.com/r/leaves/ you'll see just how many people have been smoking since they were teenagers and are not 30 or 40 and don't remember what life was like.
I do agree with most of what you say (acid reflux is inherent to smoking in general, though; it's not specific to weed), but the point is that it's only problematic if it becomes a habit.
It doesn't have to. If you were drinking as much as you were smoking, you would probably fare even worse, and I don't think alcohol has a lower potential for abuse; in fact, it is likely worse because it is not as strongly socially stigmatized.
Personally, I have rarely purchased weed myself, but I have consumed quite a bit because of many stoner friends.
When they would share, I would never have the strength to refuse, but I could very much feel the impact the next day.
But I think that if you can manage the consumption just like you would do with alcohol, it's mostly fine. If you smoke a joint once every few weeks, the impact on your life is unlikely to be that bad. Of course the hard part is managing that, but it's true for alcohol as well…
Munchies are pretty benign if you have enough sense to stock your home with healthy options like unprocessed foods and no sugary stuff.
There is no benign volume of alcohol consumption. It's hard on your liver[0], causes cardiovascular disease[1], produces carcinogenic metabolites[2], it's a horrible drug... without even considering the high occurrence of abusive/violent drunks compared to weed.
