[nostrademons]

Alcohol's been around for millenia because for millenia, humans could not reliably find safe water sources. All sorts of microbes like to grow in water; if it weren't for the cellular poison known as ethanol, you'd probably be drinking giardia, cholera, E.coli, and all sorts of other microbes along with your water.

It was only the development of municipal water chlorination that made alcohol unnecessary. That didn't start getting widespread adoption until the 1930s (two generations ago), and wasn't legislated until 1972 (one generation ago). So it's certainly conceivable that within one generation, alcohol will go the way of tobacco.