Alcohol is cunning, baffling and powerful because those are the words of a man who didn't completely understand the social forces he was dealing with. An allergy? A metabolic disease? The devil? These social forces strangely remain present in the way other drugs are compared to alcohol, still the drug of moderation, the little dance with the devil in a bottle of chardonnay. Actually saying, yeah, you can moderate with heroine. People do. Or speed. Adderall. Or sugar. Knocks alcohol down a peg and puts it on the same level with trashy street drugs. Not the devil in prada, just an addictive substance that hits the right spots in the brain. Same as the rest, you just have nicer clothes.
I think this would have a hugely beneficial social effect. For one thing, therapists across the land who currently peddle moderation would have to examine their paradigm; meth addicts ostracized and preyed upon by the same narcissistic cultural narratives and forces which elevate the occasional coke user or tiresome micro brew aficionado, would be able to claim kinship.
If everyone acknowledged that, yeah, you can actually moderate and choose, but it's harder after you're addicted to something, be it alcohol or meth, then maybe in the very least, the prisons would be less full. Maybe people would even connect sober if the stigma was spread more evenly, so that there wasn't really a stigma, just a perception of reality, details.