[samatman]

Nope, I'm quite convinced it's the varying availability of the other substances.

Coffee, tea, and tobacco, became at least as widespread once global trade made that possible. Coca was late to the party because it doesn't grow well outside of its native region.

Cannabis is an odd one, in that it was extremely widespread and making solid inroads in Europe and North America, when it became a weapon for United States racial policy, and a jobs program for federal police after the repeal of Prohibition. Coca and cocaine got caught up in the same dragnet.

Opium and its derivatives are genuinely pernicious and attempts to normalize their use outside of medicine have been resisted repeatedly throughout history.

Which leaves psychedelics, which are... weird, and also were largely unknown until some anthropologists in the 40s and 50s drew attention to them.

The history of 'modern' drug prohibition owes more to politics than the inherent properties of the substances in question.

[fomine3]

Alcohol can be easily brewed from many foods without global trade, unlike other drugs

[spodek]

You left out refined sugar in its many forms. In total deaths and disease as well as cost to society dwarfs everything. The combination of being legal, advertised, and by some measures as addictive as any others is tough to beat.