> My main guess for that special treatment is merely that tobacco and alcohol were global when we started taking care about global health issues, so we left them, but banned any newcomer

That narrative just doesn’t hold up.

Opium, heroin and cocaine were pretty much global when we started taking care about global health issues.

Not consumed by everyone all around the world, for sure, but readily available and consumed nearly everywhere.

Heck, heroin was considered a magical cough syrup safer than morphine at one point. It took nearly 30 years for it to be banned in the US [1][2]

Compared to tobacco and alcohol, it certainly is a young one, but cannabis and hallucinogenic mushrooms hardly qualify as newcomers.

[1]: https://medicine.yale.edu/news/yale-medicine-magazine/from-c...

[2]: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bu...

There are plenty of psychoactive substances on the shelves of any major supermarket and most of the stuff is completely unregulated.

How is coffee different from tobacco? How is nutmeg or saffron different from drugs? How about artificial flavonoid—xanthine concoctions such as Red Bull?

> How is coffee different from tobacco?

The difference in effect on health is severe, for one? There’s room for more nuance than ”both of these are psychoactive substances”.

Sure. But how about the fact that tobacco and coffee actually share the same psychoactive substances, i.e. Harmala alkaloids?

Do they or don't they have the same harmful effect on health?

It's a new one on me that coffee contains nicotine, the principal addictive agent in tobacco.

They do have the same effects on the central nervous system as far as Harmala alkaloids are concerned, including deleterious effects. Some of the aforementioned alkaloids are neurotoxic, are deposited in brain fatty tissues, and can proceed the development of neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.

The public is largely noninformed about the constituents of coffee and tobacco smoke. Only nicotine and caffeine are ever mentioned, and even scientific articles routinely confuse the effects of pure nicotine and tobacco smoke, and those of pure caffeine and coffee. It is a collective illusion.

I never claimed that coffee contains nicotine: rather, what coffee and tobacco have in common are these Harmala alkaloids, the most abundant of which act as so-called monoamine oxidase inhibitors in humans.

However, some rather unexpected things do contain nicotine: tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants and green peppers.

> How about artificial flavonoid—xanthine concoctions such as Red Bull?

In my country, 'energy drinks' cannot be sold to anyone under 20 (same as alcohol and tobacco) for exactly this reason.