That mostly comes down to who you see as innocent, but I see your point anyway.

Alcy's not much different from any other drug. It causes impairment, addiction, and health problems. And obviously accidents, and there are plenty of other drugs out there that do the same thing, or might do something completely different, sometimes even worse. I'm not really willing to believe that all the other illegal drugs out there are going to do less damage than alcohol is, they'll do about the same damage just differently.

Chances are pretty high that people won't be any more responsible with other drugs than they are with other legal drugs. If you really want less dead innocents, making it legal isn't the solution. If you just want less dead people period, making it legal kind of sort of affects that but not terribly so.

The whole legal versus illegal substance argument is kind of pointless. What it comes down to is enforcement and getting people not to make the stupid choice. The ideal thing would be for all those things to be legal at any age but for whatever rhyme or reason no one would ever be irresponsible and hurt themselves or others in the process of handling them. We don't live in a world of ideals though and generally we need to decide between making a substance legal and trying to build a healthy market around it, but hopefully don't fail and just make the issue worse (see alcohol) or make it illegal and enforce it effectively. Honestly, both solutions have their downsides, but one thing about making things legal, especially in America, is you make it almost impossible to revoke it later.