https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/4/e000774
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7649209/
I could go on and on but I think I gave you a good starting point for your own research
[1] https://www.anrows.org.au/publication/links-between-alcohol-...
Frankly though, even this straw man argument is moot because it is illegal to sell alcohol without a license too. So regardless of what substance was on sale, this market place was facilitating illegal transactions.
As for whether 40 years is a bit harsh, that’s a lot more subjective. But it doesn’t further the conversation to shift definitions of substances when they’re already legally defined.
The definition of a hard drug has nothing to do with whether it is legal or not. Alcohol is a hard drug by the definition of addictiveness and propensity for harm. When it was made illegal, it didn't reduce use and only increased harms. We learned our lesson and made that hard drug legal in order mitigate the harms of organized crime benefiting from selling it.
Similarly all other illegal drugs should be made legal to reduce the harms of them being illegal and facilitating organized crime that increases violence in communities.
In that regard, the silk road was actually a net good. It reduced gang violence by preventing gangs from competing for physical territory. The US postal service delivering the darknet drugs prevented the gangs from being able to enshrine their Monopoly through violence. This was unequivocally good. Similarly reviews by customers increased quality and purity and reduced tainted drugs, reducing harm to the users. Thus, the silk road was a net social good when measured from a social welfare costs and benefits.
That's because alcohol use has been normalized for a very long time.
There's no redefinition happening, you are just comparing a 'normalized' view of alcohol to one that is more realistic about it.
Alcohol positively destroys some people and most of them lost the ability to have any self control over it at some point.
