"Aldrin: I can tell you the Moon is a dead end for NASA.

What to do?

Drop humans in low earth orbit?
Don't send humans back to the Moon?"

Moon is not a dead end.
But NASA being a rocket making company, NASA being space station operator, and/or NASA running a lunar base is a dead end. NASA managing Mars colonies would also be a dead end.
NASA task is exploration. Space exploration is not a dead end.
Though aspects of NASA space exploration can be completed.

Earth is still being explored. The Moon will also continued to be explored for thousands of years. The NASA job is to explore key aspects of the Moon- just as Lewis and Clark explored key aspects of America's West.

A large part of the Moon is in shadow- land area about the size of California.
The Manned Apollo missions found out a lot about the Moon. Despite the fact that the Apollo missions weren't primarily about exploring the Moon. Robotic exploration of the Moon before Apollo landings, don't provide the kind of information obtained from the manned missions.
Obviously, there has not been any manned mission to the Lunar polar regions.
From orbiters we know the the lunar polar regions are significantly different than the areas explored in the Apollo missions.

One could say that the areas visited during the Apollo mission could have been explored more than then they were- the exploration was given some priority, but no one can say it was given the highest priority. We did send a geologist rather than test pilots and if it didn't take much payload and it was considered a high enough priority it was included in Apollo.

It seems to me that when NASA returns to the Moon and explores the polar region it could put a higher priority on exploration, then compared to almost after thought of exploration of the Apollo program.
The result of this could be we know more about the lunar polar region and significantly more about the Moon in general.