People like their drugs and alcohol, but various societies have all kinds of issues with legalization of drugs and alcohol. Alcohol is illegal in many countrie

People like their drugs and alcohol, but various societies have all kinds of issues with legalization of drugs and alcohol. Alcohol is illegal in many countries, other drugs are illegal in other countries, with varying degrees of state-sanctioned punishments. From a biochemical perspective, alcohol is one of the more damaging drugs with long-term health consequences for heavy users, certainly on at least the same risk level as opiates, cocaine, (meth)amphetamines, benzodiazepines, cannabis, mushrooms, LSD, mescaline, nictotine, etc. Behavioral consequences of use and abuse are not much different (think of how many people are killed by drunk drivers). The underlying issue here probably isn't infrequent use, it's people who grow so accustomed to their substance of choice that they can't do anything or attend any event without it. Smokers deprived of their nicotine can't sit still or interact with other people, alcoholics deprived of their daily drink go into fits, opiate addicts start climbing the walls, etc. If these are the people designing social gatherings, you can be sure they're going to set them up so that their substance of choice is the center of the activity. If they get upset that others aren't imbibing with them, they're just looking for social support of their rather unhealthy behavior. For many of us, however, a 'work-related social event' is the last thing we'd want to do with our free time - it's time on the clock, representing the company, and might very well go into our performance review in some way.