They primarily want it shut down because it has enabled citizen journalism that they can't control and that is a threat to status quo. Not because people can sell drugs, do money laundering, organize terrorism or share cp on there, that's just the excuse for it. Like it has been for every outreach against privacy and freedom of information.
Ukraine and palestine have probably been the main motivator for this push against telegram. Like Russians can share it's view of the war to almost a billion eye pairs. Western media and adjacent political power and institutions have awoken to the fact and find it untenable when they can't enforce media and information blockade on people. It's not even about the western population since telegram is much more popular in the third world that it's in the west.
Street dealing is desperation, a symptom, almost always socially inflicted.
If telegram is keeping the streets clean, that says a lot about the society in which it functions.
:)
(Every country has its own illicit market, it’s just where that takes place and what is restricted that matters.. no legislation is ever going to rid the illicit market. Ever. It exists for a reason, whatever reason. Just make the majority of it (self-harm drugs and the like) legal and the illegal rings for other stuff are a lot easier to spot. Those will be the things that should be illegal, not drugs which primarily harm adults able to consent to doing them. Let’s do the Portugal method of decrim and social support. Even if it isn’t perfect, it’s good.)