Addictive substances

My normal meeting got a bit heated last week due to a discussion of being "cali sober," and whether people who are sober from alcohol but not from weed are lying about being sober, and that their time doesn't count if they were smoking weed during it. Personally, I don't use marijuana and I restarted my clock once I stopped taking edibles. But I think that to go so far as to tell someone that they're wrong about their time sober or even that they are sober is unnecessarily alienating to the newcomer among us.

My strong opinion is that also it simply is not lying, because sobriety looks different to different people - personally, I don't use nicotine, because it has always snowballed for me into alcohol/weed/other drugs, but I know people who can use it and not have it affect other areas of their sobriety. I wouldn't say that those people are "lying" about being sober, their sobriety is just different from mine. What are other people's thoughts?

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[I have a whole other bundle of thoughts re: nicotine addiction and the current science on how there is a strong correlation between substance abuse and high rates of cigarette use, nicotine stimulates the same areas of the brain as alcohol, smoking can prime individuals for relapse, people who have been in treatment for alcohol problems are more likely to die from tobacco-related diseases than from alcohol-related problems, and stopping smoking makes alcohol relapse less likely.

HOWEVER, I would not say that someone is lying about being sober just because they smoke cigarettes]