to your point, leatherbd, you can put your dragon on whatever substrate you decide, good to hear you've had success with it. I have opted not to use sand for the following reasons:
It may not cause impaction, but as a new reptile owner, I'd rather focus on other aspects of husbandry like the heating and lighting to ensure optimum health of my beardie. I have already obsessed enough about every little thing, whatever I can do to reduce my anxiety, including simplifying substrate, is a welcome choice.
It may not get in their eyes and cause infections, but I don't want to put my beardie in a situation where that might happen, regardless of the probability (or lack thereof)
It might be easy to clean, but my current experience with reptile carpet and training my dragon not to poop in it's cage, has been very easy to maintain already.
After reading hundreds of stories of baby beardies who ate sand and died, it didn't seem like a chance worth taking.
This seems like an ongoing debate among many dragon owners...