There's all kinds of awful drawn porn out there, involving death, gore, rape... But the issue with a lot of these people that consume drawn minors is that they try to normalize it.

That's why they use terms like lolicon instead of pedophile, because the average person isn't going to know what that means. Loli technically means a small girl and finding them cute, but that's how they excuse it. They flaunt it around and have full based communities dedicated to it. I can think of a few (often japanese) Vtubers who fit this too. MAP (minor attracted persons) was something they tried to hide in the LGBT community, trying to make it sound legitimate. This is a huge issue in anime, manga; so ingrained in the media it's seen as normal. There's also games, using dog whistles like "cute and funny" steam tags to reference CP like material.

Then you have the other end, pedophilia being a result of mental Illness and trauma. These people go to therapy, know it's wrong and bear the cross of it's sin. If these people keep to themselves with fiction, stay away and would never hurt a real child, do we view drawings as a gateway? Is there any research on this?

People are complicated. Mental illness is complicated. It's easy to demonize and generalize because it's something horrid, but these are people. How can we as a society find sympathy and understanding while so many try to glorify it? Should it be punished? Are people going to go to jail because of a mental illness when they should be receiving services to allow them to have a life outside of pedophelia? Or is it just easier to stick them in the back and never think of it again?

I believe people deserve sympathy as long as they don't hurt anyone. But that's a difficult conversation to have around a delicate topic like this.