You really cannot stop illicit drug use. A hard approach to prohibition not only makes people less safe, it’s a massive waste of spending. On just a pragmatic level- Fentanyl and analogues are by weight hundreds of times more potent than morphine. How do you even effectively stop that from getting across borders? Silk Road provided a brief counterpoint, and ideally wouldn’t have had to exist. The ideals it represented were more broad- for drug regulations/spending that focus on safety, and respect individual rights / bodily autonomy (ofc limited to not harming or endangering others).

Separating the drugs from the adjacent crime and problems that come with an illicit industry by finding a way to make it run kinda like normal business seems pretty admirable to me.

>What admirable ideal is this?!

That adults should be able to buy and sell whatever the fuck they want?

And that the government should not get a say, or even a cut?

I don't necessarily fully agree with that, but for sure it's an ideal, and has been expressed many times (e.g. by libertarians).