D in my opinion

IMO e....

i pick e ...the rest of the answers seem redundant

e in my opinion

IMO A.

To Me Equally as effective as sounds redundant. "As effective as" itself conveys that it is "Equally effective".

Moreover, when seperating the sentence, i got two meaningful sentences.

Moderate exercise can be equally effective as most sedatives
Moderate exercise can be less addictive than most sedatives.

What is the OA ?

I think it is A too.
Equally and as effective as are the same thing.
Also we should try and avoid use of being...
Other options are clumsy and awkward.

The key is to break the sentence in to 2 parallel sentences:
Moderate exercise can be equally effective as most sedatives
Moderate exercise can be less addictive than most sedatives.

Put in other options and you will see that either of the 2 sentences are not gramatically correct.

equally given so the answer will not have as...as
BD goes out
equally effectively equal is wrong C goes

A => equally effective as, and less additive than, most sedatives
E => equally effective , and less additive than, most sedatives

remove the part between ,,

A => equally effective as most sedatives
E => equally effective most sedatives

E is wrong
so i think A is the answer

I will go with "e"
considering parallelism.
Whats OA ?

D, Idiom check OG 10 ....