[ineedasername]

I think the reason one bothers us and another doesn't (in the case off smoking) relates to the level of non-contradiction evidence. It's been decades since the pseudo-research propaganda from the tobacco industry was taken seriously, and lots of legitimate research to go along with that.

Alcohol on the other hand seems to produce a fair number of contradictory studies on a regular basis. There are pretty clear negative effects of excessive use, but at the low-to-moderate levels it's a lot murkier. It's especially hard to know from some studies whether or not the proposed negative impact was caused by alcohol or whether alcohol use was a type of proxy variable for general health and lifestyle.

[notahacker]

It seems the reason they've gone for the "no amount of alcohol is good for" precisely because of the existence and popular influence of contradictory claims. They're taking the position that it's the negative effects that have the plausible mechanisms and the associations of low-to-moderate use with sometimes better outcomes than abstinent cohorts that are most likely proxy variables for general health and [former] lifestyle.

(c.f. absolutely no pop-science reporting on supposed therapeutic benefits of cosmic radiation from frequent flying, so the average person hearing about it is likely to overestimate its negative effects rather than wonder if they should be booking a flight with every meal!)