> I don't know how much more explicit I can be with a phrase like "regulate into the dirt."

"regulate it into the dirt" is commonly understood to mean the very real practice of placing so many restrictions/conditions on something that it becomes impractical to operate within the industry of whatever "it" is while explicitly not actually banning it outright.

I tend to agree that there's no reason it should exist, but I'm open to the idea that maybe there's a worthy purpose out there that I'm missing.

Normally if the policy outcome you wish for is for X to be non-existent, then it would be more precise and explicit to say "we should ban X". The word regulate implies to some degree that we want X to exist, just in a way that is more constrained for better outcomes. Think about the mechanical meaning of the word regulate. To try to ban something under the guise of regulation makes it seem like you are wishing for a bad-faith effort to use regulation to make something fail rather than function.