These are far more dangerous drugs in this sense... even a small child can tell you cocaine is bad for you or that LSD is a “drug”, but no one considers soda and coffee to be drug laced.
These are the real gateway drugs, by far.
If Silicon Valley had decent espresso, no joke, there would be no demand for any of these stupid drugs people are messing with. But the espresso tastes like absolute poop. In the bay area you can market and sell poop drinks as artisinal or small batch or whatever. Its essentially poop. E.g. if you think blue bottle tastes good, I could sell you a cup of poop for $10 easy because you have been fooled.
Back to seriousness, the real problem in all of this is failure to understand the real impacts of seamingly harmless things (processed sugars and caffeine) NOT obviously harmful substances. There must be a progression from the former to the latter. Who the fuck wakes up one morning and says: “shit, works been hard lately, id like to try a line of cocaine, i heard its really great for relaxation”. Wake up, it doesnt happen like that.
Yes, i have conveniently left alcohol out of this ranking, but its #3. If you dont know how bad alcohol is for your brain and body... heh...
The real story is the engineer drinking 8+ cups of black coffee or 10 sodas per day... not the coo ceo or vp doing marijuana or cocaine before work. The latter knows what theyre doing, they may be depressed but they know whats up. The former, probably not. And those seemingly safe substances kick off the dangerous ones.