Mr Picard is an honest writer, but at the same time he vigorously presents one side of the argument. He talks about how "we" have allowed and normalized alcohol. -- Huh? Meaning 21st century society? Hardly. 
Alcohol, beer and wine specifically, are deeply rooted and mostly benevolent elements of Western culture and economics. There is often an identifiable health benefit (see the 1995 Copenhagen study on reduced mortality rates correlated with drinking red wine),  entirely unlike cigarettes, which have no health benefits.
Safer drinking? Fine. Less drinking? OK. But treating alcohol more like cigarettes -- let's face it, that's where this alarmist public-health train is headed -- a bad idea and self-defeating, cf. Prohibition.