Alcohol is a hardcore drug. If you drink alcohol, you are a drug user.

I take the greatest issue with the first assertion: "Drugs don"t exist in a legal/healthy and illegal/unhealthy binary. It"s a spectrum. Marijuana and caffeine might be a 2/10 in harm. MDMA might be a 5. Heroin and Crack might be a 10/10 in harm. Alcohol would probably be an 8. By hardcore drug, I simply mean the risk that it carries." I agree with the first sentence -- true, drugs do not exist in a binary system. Then you immediately state, "By hardcore drug, I simply mean the risk that it carries." That's a pretty big false equivalence. Many, many ingested substances carry risk. Carrying risk does not make something a hardcore drug. This entire premise is flawed and the logic breaks down when you acknowledged that there is a spectrum, and immediately backtrack and classify alcohol into the extreme end of the spectrum for the fact that it carries risk, disregarding the spectrum of outcomes one can experience with alcohol you mentioned a priori. You back track with this "Most people are fine, but a fraction of the users are in serious danger. Drugs like PCP are used moderately at raves just fine (and work fine for most users), but I wouldn't call them "light". Likewise with alcohol." Here you acknowledge that most people are fine drinking alcohol, and that only a fraction of the users are in serious danger. That doesn't sound like a hardcore drug to me. However, most people are not fine shooting Heroine or smoking crystal meth, and a very large, non-trivial portion of real hard drugs have a user-base significantly more impacted. The percentage of people that drink alcohol and end up ok in life is pretty high, compared to the percentage of regular users of traditional hard drugs like crystal meth or crack cocaine end up with much worse sociological and physiological outcomes, as the latter are real hardcore drugs. You then go on to say this "Although, alcohol carries a societal risk. Drunks often get physically active into fights and into cars for that matter." Lot's of things carry societal risk. Life is dangerous. Guns carry societal risk. So do cars, wars, and an ignorant populace voting with their fears at heart rather than logic and reason. This is not a reason to classify it as hardcore. You: "I'm more afraid of what an alcoholic might do to innocent people than what some star-gazing LSD hippie would do." Your personal fears do not make alcohol a hardcore drug. There is a vast portion of the population that share your fear. I fear what X religion taken literally might do to innocent people, but I am not going to call X religion hardcore because of potential for extreme behavior. Nor will I classify those who casually partake in that religion as "hardcore X adherents". "I'm also saying, don't be afraid of things like skydiving and bungee jumping either, if they're less risky than alcohol." Risk is also subjective -- are we talking societal risk? Risk to emotional trauma? Risk of financial loss? Risk of exploding ones skull on the ground at terminal velocity? Less risky is a totally subjective sentiment. It's less risky to lie in bed all day. It's also more risky to lie in bed all day, depending what you classify as risk. Is becoming lethargic and experiencing muscle atrophy your largest perceived risk, or is going out and getting mugged by a random person the larger perceived risk? Both orthogonal situations can carry perceived equivalent risk, so perceived risk versus measured, quantified risk are vastly different concepts. Lastly, the language implications of the pro side: If alcohol is hardcore drug, then this implies one of two things: a - either users of alcohol are "hardcore-drug users" b - or users of alcohol are "hardcore drug-users" Point a is mostly what we've been debating, the merits of classifying alcohol as a hardcore drug. But assuming you are interspersing point b into your defense, as I have contested previously, casual users of alcohol aren't "hardcore" into using drugs.