I don’t know about that. Government can raise sin taxes to the point that it incentivizes the black market in the same manner prohibition stimulates the drug trade.
It CAN do that - but the near absence of a black market in alcohol indicates that it has not done so (yet).
There is huge business in cigarettes with counterfeit tax stamps compared to booze, partly I think because nicotine is more addictive and because smokes are more compact and because gov’t has found it easy to continuously raise cigarette taxes while the booze lobby has a much larger consumer/voter base to protect them from the perpetually revenue hungry politicians.
All true - but of the differences you note, I think the tax difference is the largest.
It is also true that shipping liquids is a shipper’s PITA, which is another reason to not bother with booze. If alcohol came in a powder you mixed with water to drink, it would be trafficked illegally with counterfeit tax stamps just like the smokes are.
As compact and easily smuggled as drugs are in comparison to alcohol, it amazes me how more people don’t get why interdiction and the WOD is such a waste of resources and a chronic endangerer of civil rights.