Alcohol is absolutely an issue, all drug use is. I don't limit myself to 'some' chemicals. But I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, are you asking if I think drug use ought to be treated the same way, as an environmental and behavioral issue, rather than some individualistic moral guilt thing? Yes, absolutely.

It's a good example actually. We've done incredible damage by moralizing drug use rather than treating it as medical issue and instead promote quackery like AA which has horrible outcomes.

What I meant was, do the same people who have that "moralistic and individualistic worldview" and reject lead as a possible cause of things believe (or rather disbelieve?) the same things about alcohol?

I'm sure we've all seen alcohol or illicit drug use used to further the morality tales we tell ourselves.

Lead is a lot harder to do it with because it was in water or paint.

If you want a morality tale it's the worst because it means a the perps were originally helpless victims themselves.

The worse thing I think comes from some really old chemistry books from the early 1900's I inherited. The thing from those books is educated people back when they started putting lead in paint and gasoline absolutely knew lead caused developmental brain damage.