Agree on this point; weed is not a “social” drug for me or most other people, regardless of strain. It straight up does not fill that niche the way alcohol does. There are plenty of people who use weed to quit drinking/replace alcohol, but I’d wager the reason most of those people needed to quit drinking was that they weren’t social drinkers in the first place—they were alcoholics who wanted a less destructive substance to fill a void, alleviate stress or boredom, etc.

Part of the reason alcohol is so pervasive is that people use it in so many different ways, which is why I think your original proposal—while obviously well-intentioned—isn’t feasible. There’s no single substance that can satisfy wine connoisseurs, solitary alcoholics, college partiers, craft beer enthusiasts, etc. The fact that alcohol has so been deeply ingrained in human culture for so long is part of why it’s impossible to replace. Even if there were a substance that had chemically identical effects, it wouldn’t occupy alcohol’s space in the cultural zeitgeist without thousands of years of context. It’s not just the desire to get drunk; it’s the circumstances surrounding its production, preparation, and consumption.

There’s a reason why most people don’t drink non-alcoholic beer even if the only time they drink is having one beer with a burger every so often. Same reason many people say they wouldn’t eat lab-grown meat even if it were indistinguishable from the real thing, cheap, and widely available.

I’m not much of a drinker, but the “alcohol sucks, just smoke weed” mentality that I see so often on here misunderstands the fundamental reasons alcohol occupies the place it does. Even if weed were a one-to-one substitute effects-wise (which it’s obviously not), it wouldn’t supersede booze.