The paper analyses the complex counteraction between modern state and illicit drug market. Considering the different scientific views on the role of drug users in the drug trafficking chain, the author points out that main problem of conflict interpretation of drug use is that without a correct localization of the place and role of the drug user in the state vs. drug market conflict, it is impossible to conduct scientifically substantiated examination of such conflicts. In a practical sense, this significantly affects the formation of the legislative framework for combating drug trafficking. The author assumes that drug users can be a subject of conflicts between the state and the drug market, and the object of some of them. The problem of finding a correct control regime for a drug user is posed as a measure, without which it is impossible to effectively combat the drug. Analysis of international experience has shown that drug use can be: 1) criminalized and thus included in drug trafficking; 2) is not included in the illicit traffic of drugs, but is prohibited indirectly, through the criminalization of acts accompanying consumption; 3) separated by the state from the illicit drug market and thereby legalized. The results of a study of the historical evolution of the Russian anti-drug policy from the late imperial period to the present time are presented. The author concludes that, despite the fact that its core is consumer control, law enforcement practice is focused on combating large-scale drug trafficking. It proposes supplementing the basic and normative documents regulating relations in the sphere of illicit drug trafficking with the concept of a “drug user”, which will make it possible to include drug use in the sphere of state control.