POT, POLICE, AND PROSTITUTES

I don't like tobacco.

Every day, I see friends and co-workers smoke, and I see giant billboards
subtly and not so subtly linking cigarettes with sex, but I'm hardly
tempted.

I don't like the taste of tobacco, and I don't get a high from it, so
there's nothing in it for me. Pot of course, is a different story.

Marijuana's illegality won't keep me from searching it out. It'd be great if
I could just go to a bar or a cafe and buy some pot over the counter like
they do in Holland, but purchasing it here isn't without its amusements. For
example, every time my pot connection comes through, he'll call me and use a
code word. Last week, he left this message on my machine: "Hey, kid," he
said. "I got that 'asparagus' you wanted.

Come by around midnight to pick it up.

My simple point: People make up their own minds about certain vices with or
without the law on their side.

Take for example the story about King County police recently shutting down
escort services (see "Sex Raids," p.17). According to the article, local
police have been using the Seattle Weekly and other papers that carry
advertisements for escort services to close down businesses they think are
fronting for prostitution and to catch clients on the make. I fined this a
puzzling, arbitrary enactment of the law and another piece of evidence that
cops generally suck.

Paying for sex is a consensual business transaction. I personally don't
approve of it, but what does my opinion or anyone else's have to do with it?
Whether we like it or not, prostitution is part of our culture.

The fact that it's illegal in this state won't eradicate the sex worker or
the consumer. We even have movies that glorify escorts.

Think Pretty Woman, Risky Business, Independence Day, and practically all of
Woody Allen's movies in the past decade.

How do we resolve such acceptance with our laws?

Some years ago, I lived in Holland, where prostitution is legal.

Go to any town, and you'll find several streets full of houses where women
dressed in skimpy lingerie display themselves in front of large windows.

Most Dutch people I met agreed that legalizing prostitution benefited
everyone - sex workers receive health insurance and routine checkups, they
get fair wages, pimps don't beat them up, and the state gets a share of
everything by taxing whore-houses. Does that mean that everyone was whooping
it up with a whore? No, just because prostitution is legal in Holland
doesn't mean that there aren't people who disapprove of paid sex, or just
find it not to their liking. (Ditto for the pot.)

By keeping prostitution illegal in most of this country, it's giving the
message that Americans don't have the individual common sense to choose
what's right or wrong for them.