It’s one thing to have differing views, but I’ve seen enough attempted reddit migrations to be relieved that the popular communities in the fediverse so far haven’t been about crazy racist stuff or other extreme right bullshit.
I am also glad that I’m getting away from reddit’s general political shitposting, which was more left leaning. You couldn’t have any proper discourse on there, and even I with my generally more left leaning views recognized that.
The medical opinion backed up by doctors and the majority of the medical community used to be that alcohol for minors was fine and that cigarettes were good for you.
The medical community is perfectly capable of being wrong and prescribing societal dogma over anything else.
You’re dismissing all of modern medicine there, which IMO is even worse. Knowledge might change, but until it does, we have to follow the current state of science. Otherwise we’re back to guesswork.