You forgot about how alcohol and marijuana are remarkably different. 

Alcohol gets you physically addicted (with withdrawals that can kill you), causes more violence than any other substance on the planet, causes more death from driving than any other substance, you can overdose and die, and has virtually no established medical benefits. 

Marijuana is only mentally addictive (difference being NO withdraw symptoms), it doesn’t harm your body nearly as much as alcohol (and NOT at all if you stick to edibles or CBD), causes people to act relaxed and chill (exact opposite of alcohol), you cannot overdose and die, and has numerous medical benefits as shown by hundreds of scientific studies from all over the world. Not to mention 1/2 the US states have shown the medical benefits enough to get laws passed on this basis alone. 

My doctor has recommended marijuana, unprompted, for some pain after an injury, in lieu of opioids. My grandparents have also been prescribed marijuana to help with their experiences through chemo.

Empirical evidence is everywhere, scientific evidence is huge and getting bigger. [I don’t know how many studies I have to link here, but you might learn something by looking into them.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2241751/)