FIGHT ADDICTION, SAVE A PROSTITUTE

Uplands. That's where they should put the red-light district. Nice wide
streets, pleasant lighting, handy for the randy rich.

Or maybe North Saanich, or Broadmead, or we're-open-for-business Langford,
though the latter would only want big, Costco-sized prostitutes.

Let's get this straight: Are we worried about street prostitution because
it's bad for neighbourhoods, or because it's bad for street prostitutes?

Because if all we want to do is store the trash where the company can't see
it, then leave the stroll where it is, in the light-industrial area, away
from people's houses, away from the tourists and foot traffic. And let's
just make annoyed tsk-tsk noises at MLA Sheila Orr for raising the issue at
all, so we can go back to pretending the problem doesn't exist.

But assume, for a moment, that we have a higher purpose here, that the goal
is to offer a way out for those selling themselves out of desperation --
and to cut the ears off the power-tripping weasels who prey on their weakness.

We are not talking about equal-footing transactions between consenting
adults here. We are not talking about providing some sort of "safety valve"
for lust-ridden men who would otherwise run amok, forcing their unwanted
attention on nuns and other decent folk. (Hey, some of my best friends are
lust-ridden, and virtually all are nun-free.)

Of the 30 to 45 prostitutes working Victoria streets at any given time, all
but one or two, at most, will be hard-core drug addicts. Half are under-age
- -- children, in other words.

These are the prostitutes the escort agencies won't hire because they're
too young or too far gone in their addictions. Some are mentally ill. Some
suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome.

They are not trash. They are not street meat. They are seriously messed-up
people who need something more than a few bucks and an open door to a
stranger's car. But society's general reaction is a resigned shrug and the
weary old line that you'll never eliminate the world's oldest profession --
the world's oldest cop-out.

If the authorities truly want to deal with prostitution, attack the reason
they're there. Put resources into fighting addiction and building healthy
families. If you want them off the street, you have to get them off drugs.

And go after their customers, hard. Some cities have launched Shame The
Johns programs (I will stop short of suggesting Shoot The Johns as an
alternative). What kind of bastard knowingly exploits the desperation of a
vulnerable, drug-addicted, screwed-up kid? (A story, perhaps apocryphal,
made the rounds a while back about a man who booked into a hotel and phoned
for a call girl. "Make her a young one," he said. Answering a knock at the
door, he found himself staring at his daughter.)

With all respect to Orr, who is at least looking for solutions, a
designated area for prostitutes is not the answer. The problem isn't the
location of Victoria's street-walker stroll, which has wandered at times
from Government to Fisgard to Rock Bay to Pembroke and even the environs of
the Times Colonist building (making for some confused curb-crawlers when
picket lines went up a couple of years ago).

The real problem is that the stroll exists at all. Can street prostitution
be eliminated? Of course not, but that doesn't mean we should tacitly
condone it, which is what a red-light zone would mean.

It's the same conundrum that comes with safe-injection sites or the
decriminalization of drugs; any attempt to accommodate an unacceptable but
unavoidable reality translates into unspoken approval.

We don't need any more men cruising around in cars, thinking it's OK to buy
sex from strung-out junkies.