Although it is true that some young people drink and/or smoke just to be "cool," which is stupid either way, I don't think comparing the two things is fair at all.

Alcohol is neither particularly bad for you or particularly addictive in moderated quantities. Nicotine, by contrast, is harmful and addictive right from the start.

Of course, if you're going to abuse one or the other, abusing alcohol is the worse by far. (The worst nicotine will do to you is kill you.) But that doesn't mean a guy that has even as much as a glass of wine a day is on some slippery slope to alcoholism, and it doesn't help the fight against alcoholism to say so.