The overall impact of alcohol on society is not because it is “much more dangerous than most”, but because it is consumed (and abused) by orders of magnitude more people than almost every other drug.
That's partly the case, but part of the higher ranking of other drugs is due to lack of safe access. There's no perfect model, but I would argue alcohol is a drug like any other - with risk of dependence, with health consequences, and with mortality risk. So my question to the parent is: why would we separate alcohol? Would parent be in favor of returning to prohibition?
I think it's fair to say that alcohol does far more harm to the user than psychedelics.
The overall impact of alcohol on society is not because it is “much more dangerous than most”, but because it is consumed (and abused) by orders of magnitude more people than almost every other drug.