> My main guess for that special treatment is merely that tobacco and alcohol were global when we started taking care about global health issues, so we left them, but banned any newcomer

That narrative just doesn’t hold up.

Opium, heroin and cocaine were pretty much global when we started taking care about global health issues.

Not consumed by everyone all around the world, for sure, but readily available and consumed nearly everywhere.

Heck, heroin was considered a magical cough syrup safer than morphine at one point. It took nearly 30 years for it to be banned in the US [1][2]

Compared to tobacco and alcohol, it certainly is a young one, but cannabis and hallucinogenic mushrooms hardly qualify as newcomers.

[1]: https://medicine.yale.edu/news/yale-medicine-magazine/from-c...

[2]: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bu...

There are plenty of psychoactive substances on the shelves of any major supermarket and most of the stuff is completely unregulated.

How is coffee different from tobacco? How is nutmeg or saffron different from drugs? How about artificial flavonoid—xanthine concoctions such as Red Bull?