A hill I am more than willing to die on is that 'free trade cocaine' would be a huge improvement across a whole range of public policy outcomes relative to the status quo

I think the issue is that (as someone on here was discussing the other day) in practical terms this means "government subsidy for cartels".

Depends on the design of any specific scheme but in principle it should be the opposite, i.e. the current model facilitates cartels, e.g. consumers can't just buy direct from producers