The prohibition on alcohol is total and admits no ritual exception — there is no communion wine, no festival drink and no permitted occasion, which distinguishes it from the Islamic prohibition mainly in the absence of any accommodating tradition. It extends to drugs taken for intoxication or pleasure, including cannabis and opiates; medically prescribed substances are exempt, and the writings note that alcohol may be used medicinally on a physician's direction. Tobacco is discouraged but not prohibited. The reasoning given is that reason is the distinguishing human faculty and that anything which suspends it is a degradation, and that alcohol produces the social harms the writings enumerate at length. The practical texture of the rule is social rather than moral: it is the thing that most consistently marks a Bahá'í as different in workplaces, weddings and dinner parties across much of the world, and the community discusses how to decline gracefully rather than whether to decline.