Quote Originally Posted by Besimudo
"The real answer is that less people use them."

How vague! Did you know that 80% of Australia's Beer is consumed by 10% of its population.... So is that a case of your "less people using them"?
Less people smoke cannabis than drink alcohol in today's society, yes.
Maybe this will make life easier:

Short-term alcohol = alcoholic poisoning, death, vomiting.
Short-term dope = mild hallucinations, at worst time distortion.

Long-term alcohol = sclerosis of liver, hepatitis, marriage break-down, domestic violence.
Long-term dope = Start dressing like Bob Marley.
I've noticed the pro-legalisation lobby always make comparisons to alcohol, yet ignore the more logical comparison with tobacco. Cannabis is far worse than tobacco, an unfiltered joint unleashing far more carcinogens and tar, leading to much more severe cardiovascular effects. Add to that the correlation between cannabis usage and certain neurological disorders in later life. A steady use of alcohol, in a daily but regulated amount, is beneficial to health, at the very least it's not permanently harmful. Regular doses of tobacco smoke or cannabis have lasting effects; tar and whatnot don't simply get circulated out of our systems.

The argument that "one is legal so the other one should be" doesn't hold water, either. Using that reasoning would eventually lead to all drugs legalised - "opium's hadly worse than cannabis, let's legalise it; heroin's practically the same as opium, time to stop the evil police state; cocaine's just a better alternative to heroin, plus it doesn't involve risky needles... lastly, methamphetamines were used in traditional Western remedies throughout the 20th century, let's honour our ancestors' traditions!"