Silk Road Operator Pardoned By Trump Makes Case For Legalizing All Drugs To Mitigate Harms Of Prohibition—Even If It’s ‘Not Necessarily What You Want To Hear’

Ross Ulbricht—who was serving a life sentence over a conviction for running a dark web illicit drug market before being pardoned by President Donald Trump—is making the case that legalizing all drugs is a superior policy to prohibition, telling a roomful of conservatives at a conference that criminalization should end even if it’s “not necessarily what you want to hear.”

During a speech before Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit (SAS) on Saturday, Ulbricht gave a forceful argument in support of legalization, referencing the failures of alcohol prohibition and the criminal activity that policy created and explaining the need for personal accountability over government-sanctioned criminalization.

While many people might reasonably prefer to see illicit drugs wiped out altogether from society, Ulbricht stressed that it isn’t a feasible option and “making drugs illegal and throwing people in prison for it is also not the answer.”

“We’ve been trying it for a long time—getting it wrong,” he said.

“So what do we do? It’s complicated, right? I’ll give you an example,” the former federal prisoner said. “There is a harmful, addictive drug that most of you have already tried. It’s called alcohol. Alcohol is legal. It’s sold in bars and grocery stores—and as a society, we leave it up to the owners of those stores to decide whether or not they’re going to sell it, and we leave it up to individuals to decide whether or not they’re going to buy it and consume it.”

“It doesn’t matter if we make it illegal. But we know that if we make it illegal, it doesn’t go away. It only makes things worse,” he said. “Look what happened with alcohol prohibition earlier last century. People kept drinking. But it also led to organized crime and violence. Those are awful. Those are terrible things.”

It “would cut the legs right out from those [cartel] organizations if drugs were legalized,” he said at the event. “I’m here to tell you the truth—not necessarily what you want to hear.”

Ulbricht emphasized that he sees “both sides” of the debate, as many “want to make it go away” and “push the button” that eradicates the illicit drug market.

“The sad truth is, by pressing that button over and over, you are just making more bad stuff. So it’s complicated. It’s not a simple problem,” he said.

“I’ve just spent over a decade in prison over drugs. And on the one hand, I’m telling you I would push the button to make drugs go away if I could. And on the other hand, I’m telling you that we’d all be better off if drugs were just legalized. If that still seems like a contradiction to you, just remember: government is not that button. Government is not some magic genie that will grant you wishes if you can just get control of it. I’m sorry it doesn’t work that way.”

The event comes about a month after Ulbricht separately made the case that more clemency is needed for people in prison over drugs, arguing that more than half of the inmates he met while incarcerated “have no business being in those cages for decades.”

Trump’s pardon of Ulbricht was something of a surprise, as he made repeated pledges on the campaign trail to take extreme, punitive actions—including capital punishment—against people who sell drugs. The president had previewed plans to take the action in May 2024, but it came a day later than his initial commitment to release Ulbricht “on day one” of his presidency.

Ulbricht had been sentenced to life in prison for operating the dark web market known as the Silk Road from 2011 to 2013.

The pardon represents a political departure for Trump, who in 2023 defended his position that people who sell illicit drugs should be quickly convicted and executed, touting countries like China and Singapore for enforcing the lethal penalty against drug offenders. Trump said that capital punishment “is the only way you’re going to stop” addiction.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia.