Of course, now it seems I'm arguing for prohibition after all, maybe that's because alcohol is legal, is that why more people get into trouble with it?
My sense is that criminalization doesn't have much role in it though. I think cultural factors, as you mention, are more powerful.
And the number of people whose lives are wrecked by the criminal justice system because of drug prohibition is really significant.
Maybe that's too strong, I'm not really sure how much more dangerous cocaine is. But even if it were somehow comparable, maybe we should be scared by what the arrival of alcohol did to peoples who hadn't had much of it -- this was true of many native american groups, IIRC. And many others worldwide.
Are there ways to make cocaine use safer? Yes, of course! Legalisation will help greatly (you'll know exactly what you are getting and we can standardize strength like we've done with alcohol). We can also educate folks in a variety of ways. Offer free help to folks that do find themselves addicted. I'm going to guess folks wrote about it more indepth before it became illegal as well.
What alcohol does have is widespread social understanding, it's deep in our culture. Your grandmother had a pretty decent idea of how this could go wrong, and of what non-dangerous use looks like. So does your priest. And your mother in law. And Shakespeare. Not a perfect defence mechanism, obviously, but not nothing.
Whereas for cocaine, almost nobody has a clue.