i-thorts' i-Views: Is it in society's interest to keep drugs and prostitution illegal?

Reblogged from i-thorts' i-Views.

 Should Drugs & Prostitution 

Be Illegal?

That's the question that any politician should ask; but not many ever do.

The law of this land is drugs are bad keep away from them (but alcohol and tobacco is okay so long as tax is being paid on them) and prostitution is immoral therefore bad; so both are equally illegal.

The thing is 'immoral' isn't the same as dangerous and 'bad' isn't the same as harmful.

Anything taken to excess is 'bad for you' - from sugar and fat to alcohol and cigarettes - but that doesn't necessarily stop their sale to the public.

Is it immoral to sell ones body for money? It's worst to sell it to feed a drug habit (for something that could be anything masquerading as the 'real deal').

Drugs and prostitution go hand-in-hand and feed each other.

Statue to honor the sex workers of the world. March 2007, Amsterdam.

Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s proves that if something is forbidden it takes on a coolness to some; an irresistability one found say. One that lures in the young and the foolhardy. And by making a commodity (alcohol, drugs or prostitution) illegal it makes that product even more profitable.

Desirable and profitable are the two words that make any business-man or -woman sit-up and take notice. But when you add illegal to this mix the business goes underground and the gangster takes over.

Crime and profit are bed-fellows. If the is a profit to be made the criminal faternity will find a way. That's how so many young and venerable women are dragged into a life of forced-prostitution - and kept there by an induction of drug addiction.

Legalize drugs and that half the battle solved. Legalize prostitution too and that most of it solved.

At what cost, I hear you state. That's simple. Make the sale of drugs a licenced affair (like alcohol and cigarettes). Prohibit their sale to minors and tax them in the same way.

Make prostitution a job. Tax their earning and make it licenced to easy prosecution of offenders. Get the girls off the streets and into safer environments with health and safety regulations in the same way that any service industry would have in place.

A plumber wouldn't ply his/her trade from a streets corner, so why should a prostitute? Safety for any venerable individual is paramount these days. So why do we have this antiquated attitude to the sex-trade.

Morality doesn't come into selling cigarettes and alcohol, so why should it be used to justify outlawing prostitution!

Drugs are freely sold from businesses 24-7. We just call them beer, wine, spirits, cider, cigarettes, and tobacco. Is there that much difference between someone legally addicted to painkillers and someone with an illegal recreational drug habit? Why this duel standard exists is taxation.

Tax all drugs for recreational and tax prostitute's earnings and make both legal; that removes the dilemma and reduces crime overnight.