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The opioid epidemic has made a lot of people, myself included, skeptical of anti-prohibition. Turns out pushing something underground often does have the effect of making it more expensive and inconvenient to access. There some study I can't find now, but it claimed legalizing prostitution actually increased human trafficking because now traffickers could mask their operations as legal sex work opening them up to new clientele they normally wouldn't have access to. I suspect there's a lot of men who would be going to brothels regularly if it was as easy as going to 7/11 but don't want to go to the bad side of town to pick up a sex workers who could be a cop doing a sting.
Same with drugs, going from a system where you had to import raw opium from Afghanistan or wherever to the west via camel and make shift submarine, then process and distribute it clandestinely, made being a heroin addict and expensive pain in the ass. Now you can buy pills made semi-legally in a factory in Mexico that some guy got prescribed to him by a shady Floridian doctor for a broken ankle he had 10 years ago.
Prohibition didn't work for weed and booze cuz both of those are things easy to make and distribute even when they're illegal, plus they're both easier to consume, and even abuse, while being a functional member do society. I think there are vices thought where you could reduce the consumption and abuse of just by making it a big fucking pain in the ass to get access to and gambling I think is one of them.
That's interesting—on the other hand, I know of one case where the shuttering of a sex work website due to human trafficking charges (which Kamala Harris lead the charge on, as it happens) actually made a lot of sex workers feel less safe. Article here.
It's not quite the same concept, but thought it was worth mentioning.
And yeah I think making gambling less accessible and less visible is good. But then, shouldn't we also do the same for alcohol and drugs, just up to the point where it's still easier to get them legally than illegally?
Thing is we kind of already do. There's a ton of regulations regarding the sale and advertisement of alcohol and tobacco, many of which are the product of activism by anti-smoking and temperance movements.
Idk how I feel about gambling personally, but you don't really have to take a hardline prohibitionist or libertarian stance on these things. I suppose one could make the argument that adults should have the right to gamble responsibly, but like you can also think regulations against problem gambling are good.
Edit: also...
So I don't really have time right now to delve deep into that article, but I kind of suspect they were interviewing adult, independent sex workers who are in the profession mostly voluntarily. Not that their experience and concerns aren't valid but I do feel like I see a lot of pro-legalization arguments coming from that crowd and I think it's worth considering their experiences as sex workers is nothing like most women in the industry. They're independent and working in a lucrative industry on their own terms, often in semi-legal niches often for wealthier clientele. I think some people in that world fail to realize legalizing full service prostitution is essentially opening the doors for it to be industrialized which like likely lead to what is essentially sex-trafficking-in-all-but-name.
That's largely where I'm at, I was just surprised by how hardline people are regarding it on here.
On the article there are some people like you mention ("Jenny, a sex worker who also runs a nude housework business in Seattle") but also the first person they mention is someone who turned to sex work after getting kicked out of their parent's house at 18. And later there's this:
I"m not super educated on sex work but I"m assuming street work is going to be much more dangerous than the web stuff