Please stop comparing the 10 million year old experience with Alcohol to the ~70 year old national experience with weed.
They are not even remotely the same thing.
It actually knocks the props out from under your argument!
From the linked article:
One model for the evolution of alcohol consumption suggests that ethanol only entered the human diet after people began to store extra food, potentially after the advent of agriculture, and that humans subsequently developed ways to intentionally direct the fermentation of food about 9,000 years ago. Therefore, the theory goes, alcoholism as a disease resulted because the human genome has not had enough time to fully adapt to alcohol.
Yes, primates (and other animals) have been occasionally eating rotten fruit for tens of millions of years. But human beings appeared on the scene only about one hundred thousand years ago, and potent sources of alcohol became available (and hence the phenomenon of alcoholism a practical problem) only after the advent of agriculture (according to the article you cited).
And, really, our "national experience" with alcohol can't be longer than the age of our country, now, can it?
On the other hand, you claim that our "national experience" with "illicit drugs" is only 70 years long? Well, that's true insofar as, before that, they weren't illicit! Rather, they were legal!
All I am suggesting is that we should return to the situation before these drugs were illegalized approx. 70 years ago!
Better that our G.N.P. should drop by tens of billions of dollars than that we should continue squandering tens of billions of dollars to limit people's inherent right to intoxication.
Regards,