I've always thought alcohol was not just bad for the individual, but society as a whole. It's not like cigarettes that just harm the person consuming it, alcohol affects everyone the person consuming is in contact with. Even then I don't think government should be intervening in any way, other than maybe stopping it from being advertised in the same ways they did with cigarettes.
But it's not, that's why there are so many cocktails to try and hide the alcohol. There's no way anybody was like "this is great" the first time they took a drink of something with alcohol in it. Maybe they liked how they felt after a couple, but the taste, no.