Historically that has not been the trend. Prohibition had related issues that could be dealt with, with the hindsight we have now but it you look at it, Prohibition was successful at reducing alcoholism. Secondly, no one said to make it illegal, just to put warnings on it to reduce consumption. Thirdly, there are other ways of reducing consumption besides outright criminalization, like raising taxes on a product significantly or limiting its sales for individuals.

This ignores the other issues of alcohol. Cigarettes may be worse for the one consuming them but alcohol kills many, many people in car crashes that would have been preventable without alcohol. Stopping the consumption of alcohol needs to be a goal as far as possible. Your point about cooking, I don’t really see as too important. Sure, alcohol has uses like cleaning or cooking, this doesn’t change the danger present from it.

Global Times is not China. It’s one news source so statements made by Global Times, especially in the editorials aren’t inherently statements made my China. They are run by individuals who sent the articles in. To claim that China made this statement is ridiculous and would be akin to saying that the US made a statement on something because of a single article NPR ran or that the UK made a statement because of a single article run by the BBC.