Prostitution and drug use questions

Great Debates
#1

I just read a sad article about prostitution here
http://www.mausland.de/wowcow.html
It got me thinking about several things.

  1. How strong is the relationship between drug use and prostitution? Are there such things as ‘pot whores’ (i.e. analogous to ‘crack whore’)?
  2. What are the stats on legalizing prostitution? Has it been shown to radically increase other forms of crime? Be socially suboptimal? Is it just a moral issue that we are dealing with? What is the difference between say acting in hardcore pornography as opposed to prostitution?
  3. Why do we not deter prostitution, the somewhat more logical way, have extremely harsh sentences for the client instead or along with harsh sentences for the prostitute? On a similar vein, does 10 years for prostitution (it might have been because this case involved drug use though) seem like too much?
  4. How effective are social efforts for reeducating prostitutes? For example, the article mentions a religion based recovery center, which has no trained professionals… how effective is this sort of thing? What about facilities with trained personnel?
  5. Is prostitution essentially sound economically? Do most prostitutes find that they are doing less work for more money all other possibilities considered?
#2

I appologise the link is wrong !!!
It should be
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/10/19/Floridian/Girl_next_door.shtml

I cut and paste the from the wrong place.

#3
  1. I really doubt there are “pot whores”, simply because pot isn’t addictive. As far as the relationship between drug use and prostitution, most of the drug addicted ones are of the street prostitute variety. Higher class prostitutes generally aren’t crack whores.
  2. Amsterdam. Check out their crime rate. Acting in hard core pornography isn’t prostitution, you’re working with a small group of people, you choose who you work with and what you do, everyone gets tested, and you’re not allowed to be high when you’re filming a scene. Plus it’s legal, as opposed to prostitution.
    3)We don’t deter prostitution by giving harsh sentences to the client because it isn’t necessary, the client isn’t a hard core criminal, they’re average guys. Charging them with something small will still affect them, and putting some businessman behind bars for a few years accomplishes nothing.
  3. I think the issue is not the reeducation of prostitutes, but treating the addiction. When treating addiction nothing works all the time, but I think having psychiatrists and doctors and other trained personal is a lot more effective than just telling someone jesus loves you.
  4. I would say that higher level prostitution is definately economically sound. Getting paid $500-$1000 and hour beats $10 and hour any day. But crack whores will do ttricks for $5, which isn’t very economically sound.
#4

Heh I think the point I was trying to get at is, why is it that pornography is legal and prostitution illegal.
I fail to see how working with a small group of people is automatically morally superior to working with a more random clientel (STDs notwithstanding).
Similarly prostitutes (specially the streetwalking kind) do get to choose whom they work with, its just that they rarely bother exercising that option. I believe similar things apply to more systemized forms of prostitution. Amsterdam appears to have a rather low crime rate. Is this evidence that prostitution should be legalized ? Similarly I can see that madating safe sex and STD tests for prostitutes is much easier to enforce if prostitution is legalized. So why isn’t it ? Should be just be blaming drugs for all prostitution ?
(I’m not so much directly countering your points **NeSBiT ** as expanding on my original post)

But if we did want to deter prostitution it would seem that the more optimal way to do so is to punish the client. After all, it appears that prostitutes don’t care too much about jail time (the article mentioned something about free food and warm showers)
and there really isn’t much more you can do to them to deter them. Putting your clean shaven businessman who does have a stable income and doesn’t really have to resort to soliciting prostitutes in jail for a few years would on the other hand be a very strong deterrent to most clean shaven businessmen.
And frankly from the moral standpoint, I think the onous of responsibility lies with the client ('specially when you are talking about your average screwed up streetwalker)

It does appear that right now in the US prostitution and drug use are very closely tied. But this hasn’t always been true. Does this mean that if the drug problem magically went away we could legalize it ?

Is prostitution harmless and victimless ?

#5

Well, unfortunately, there will always be ten or fifteen more clients to take the place of the one you lock up for a few years. Considering the costs of investigation and incarceration, I’m not sure this an effective use of law enforcement’s time. Personally, I’d like to see it legalized, regulated and taxed, much like getting a professional massage, haircut or manicure. Replace streetwalkers with brothels in strictly-zoned neighborhoods, and so forth.

#6

As it is practiced today, no. It’s harmful and dangerous for all parties involved, mostly because it’s illegal.

Because it’s illegal, control over prostitutes defaults to pimps connected to gangs and organized crime. These can terrorize “independent” operators out of the business, because the independents have no recourse to the law. Because it is illegal, only the most desperate women, with zero outside employment prospects, are willing to become prostitutes. Only drug addiction tends to force a woman to this level of desperation, and once she is so employed, her “employer” (pimp) has every incentive to see that she stays addicted. Neither pimps nor prostitutes have much incentive to practice safe sex, since customers, again, have no recourse to the law, and cannot readily comparison shop for better assurance of safety.

The laws against prostitution probably do discourage a few people from participating, and for those who support such laws (I am not one), that is adequate compensation for the above drawbacks.

#7

Not only that, but pot is cheap. Four hours of working at McDonald’s will keep all but the heaviest pot users supplied for at least a few days.

#8

Here is a faq by a woman who’s known to my friends, so I’ll vouch for its authenticity. It goes into a lot of detail about the different modes and the finances of it (from a Toronto perspective).

Assuming the faq is somewhat representative of the big city prostitution experience, the short answers to the OP are:[list=1][li]There’s a strong connection between drugs and prostitution, because many drug users turn to prostitution to support their habit; the reverse is also somewhat true, when prostitutes use drugs to cope with the experience.[/li][li]No answer in the faq.[/li][li]No answer in the faq.[/li][li]The faq’s author got out by having a supportive family, boyfriend, and friends, and mainly by getting so sick of it that she found the will to stop. Social efforts had little or nothing to do with it.[/li][li]No, it’s not economically viable–it’s a vicious cycle. Prostitutes have crappy lifestyles that degrade over time as the prostitute’s self-image degrades, as drug problems get worse, as they lose the ability to get other work (“So, Ms. X: what were you doing during this missing year on your resume?”), which increases the dependency on prostitution in its more extreme forms.[/li][/list=1]