RETHINKING THE TRADE IN SEX AND DRUGS

Our collective images of the sex trade are typically portraits of
danger, misery and victimization -- and our collective images of drug
addiction are often not much different: portraits of men and women in
poor health, with life-threatening diseases, victimized by those who
profit from the illicit nature of the trade, and committing crime to
pay for their drugs.

But the reality is more complex.

In fact, both the trade in sex and the trade in illicit drugs have
tiers of risk, and these tiers of risk produce both vastly different
images and vastly different realities. The women who work in massage
parlours and escort agencies are rarely the victims of violent crime;
they are protected by credit cards, by the men who typically run such
businesses, and by the easily identifiable names and locations of outcalls.

Although they are sex trade workers, they are seldom described as
such. They are usually more socially stable, they make more money than
street prostitutes, and they are much less likely to be drug dependent.

And although the transaction they engage in -- selling sex -- is no
different from the transaction of the street prostitute, they are
rarely targeted by enforcement efforts.

They are, to use their own euphemisms, merely escorts, or the
providers of massage services.

The portrait is not very different with the merchants who sell illegal
drugs.

Those who sell on the street to finance their own addiction inhabit an
entirely different world from those who make hundreds of thousands of
dollars annually, but rarely see either a police officer at their
door, much less the inside of a courtroom or a jail. A visit to
provincial court makes it clear that the dealers who are arrested,
charged, convicted, and imprisoned are typically petty criminals with
longstanding addictions and criminal records, caught committing crimes
to support their habits.

The problems that we face with illicit drugs also change as we move
from one drug to the next. The trade in cannabis is larger than all
the other illicit trades combined, with literally millions of
consumers. Further, the price of a cannabis high is lower than the
price of an alcohol high; we rarely find people committing crimes in
order to afford to smoke the drug. But with cocaine, crack cocaine,
crystal meth, and heroin, this portrait changes.

The dealers are often selling to addicts, and the desperation of these
consumers becomes a reality of the trade.

What about the consumers of these services?

The men who buy sexual services, and the men and women who buy
cannabis, cocaine, heroin, crack and crystal meth? We know they are
more than 50 times more likely to victimize street prostitutes than
the women who work in massage parlours or escort agencies; street
prostitution is the most dangerous line of work in the country.

We know that the consumers of cannabis run the gamut, from the
privileged to the poor. We know that crack and crystal meth are the
"poor man's cocaine", cheaper and more potent stimulants of the
central nervous system.

What can we do to protect the women who work the streets?

First, we should acknowledge the double standard.

Those who escort and massage are not targeted by law; those who
operate such businesses work to protect the interests of their service
providers.

We should consider providing similar kind of support for those who
work the streets. They are much more vulnerable, and targeting them as
criminal merely makes the point that it is the visibility of
prostitution we are reacting to, not its reality.

We need a collaboration of police and street prostitutes, and an end
to criminalization. We also know that targeting customers is
counter-productive; it will simply drive street prostitution to even
darker corners of our cities, increasing the vulnerability of these
women.

And what to do about drug addiction?

Again, the criminal law is not an ally, but an obstacle.

We should avoid the horrible mistakes that we have made with tobacco
and continue to make with alcohol, allowing irresponsible promotion of
these inherently dangerous substances. But criminal prohibition is as
problematic as commercial promotion of mind-active drugs.

Our current policy with cannabis lines the pockets of organized
crime.

If we get tougher on these folks, the net effect will be increased
prices for the consumer and increased profit for the dealers -- not
much of a solution.

We need carefully regulated adult access, and a destruction of the
current illicit market, with its violence and its absurd
profiteering.

For the drug addicted, we need options, from abstinence to
maintenance. We shouldn't be considering commercial sale of heroin,
cocaine, crack, and the like, but we can contemplate regimes of access
that would ensure that drug-addicted prostitutes don't have to take to
the streets in order to find the money for their next fix.

In other words, if we want to avoid the scenario that we are currently
facing in B.C. -- the serial murder of drug addicted sex trade workers
- -- we must acknowledge that our criminal law is at least partly
responsible for these monstrous acts.

Neil Boyd is a criminologist at Simon Fraser University.