Prostitution Headlines from Super Bowl Week Reveal Struggles & Progress

Over the years, several news outlets have produced sensational stories about thousands of “sex slaves” being trafficked to the Super Bowl. There were various human trafficking news reports related to the Super Bowl this weekend, but none of them included blatantly absurd suggestions that 100,000 victims would be in the vicinity, as has been reported in the past. Most media outlets have toned down the rhetoric based upon the results from past years. It’s sad to say, but that is progress in the prostitution debate.  

Mint Press News published an article, “Houston’s Hosting The Super Bowl & A Growing Human Trafficking Industry.” It was the typical aggressive anti-prostitution/trafficking news piece, including a stock photo with a scared young girl being touched by a menacing older man. However, the tone is shifting in this genre. This article didn’t claim that there would be a spike in trafficking linked with the Super Bowl. In fact, it included an interview with Rebecca Pfeffer, an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Houston-Downtown, who openly labeled the Super Bowl trafficking connection as a “myth.”

In short, this piece by Mint Press News accurately pointed out that human trafficking takes place throughout the calendar year. It even pointed to the issue of labor trafficking, which is usually omitted from this discussion even though labor trafficking is more prevalent than sex trafficking. As a matter of fact, Sports Illustrated printed an article, “The Super Bowl Sex-Trafficking Myth: Is it the crisis it's cracked up to be?” It accurately demonstrated that there is a verifiable human trafficking problem in this country, but the extent of the problem has been vastly exaggerated.

Make no mistake, there were credible news reports about actual cases of sex trafficking in Houston for Super Bowl weekend. However, in general, the issue of human trafficking has been grossly exaggerated. Journalistic misrepresentations ruin honest debate for better policies. After all, the media has an unofficial role in determining public policy. This Super Bowl trafficking myth has been perpetuated by news organizations that haven’t vetted for facts when quoting socially conservative activists who believe that sex work can’t be consensual. They have successfully conflated prostitution with human trafficking. In other words, many of the media’s sources are anti-prostitution activists who use human trafficking as a red herring.

The media has blindly accepted the narrative from the law enforcement community that the only way to combat sex trafficking is to criminalize everyone in the sex industry. When prostitution/trafficking stings take place, most news organizations rely solely upon arrest figures. Few news outlets dive into the details to find out if there were any actual victims of trafficking. Instead, most of these articles use ambiguous language by stating that the police “helped get these women off of the streets.” These kinds of reports neglect to mention that these “saved” women are in jail while awaiting trial for prostitution charges.

Everyone wants to eliminate human trafficking, but moral panics, such as the Super Bowl trafficking myth, have eliminated any debate to find the best course of action for tackling this issue. Most modern news coverage implies that every sex worker is a victim of human trafficking. Consequently, very few news outlets offer a different perspective that decriminalization would grant sex workers their basic rights to be protected against force, fraud, or coercion.

Why did so many news outlets embrace this form of yellow journalism, i.e. the Super Bowl trafficking myth? Sex trafficking stories certainly generate income, but many anti-trafficking “activists” with conflicts of interest helped create this myth. Long story short, in multiple ways, the anti-trafficking movement has become a racket, i.e. a dishonest and lucrative business model. Elizabeth Anne Moore wrote a blistering investigative report in 2015 for Truthout, “The American Rescue Industry: Toward an Anti-Trafficking Paramilitary,” which revealed that the top 36 anti-trafficking/rescue organizations collected $1.2 billion over the course of 2012 (the latest public records). However, Moore’s report demonstrated that most of these groups had very little money to assist actual victims of human trafficking. Granted, not everyone is this profession has cynical goals, but a billion dollar market certainly draws many opportunists.

Again, the anti-trafficking movement has become a racket. One of the other definitions of a racket is applicable, i.e. an entity that poses itself as the solution for a problem that wouldn’t exist without their involvement. Granted, sex trafficking will occur whether prostitution is decriminalized, legalized, or criminalized. However, criminalization will inevitably lead to more exploitation for those in the sex industry. Furthermore, prostitution laws haven’t had a noticeable effect on the demand. Look at the column from last Thursday by The Miami Herald, “Despite closing of 'adult' section, Miami Backpage girls thriving online.” The government was able to pressure that website to remove their adult ads, but that merely pushed the industry underground with fewer protections for sex workers and less transparency for law enforcement.

A story from last Tuesday in Alaska should eliminate any doubt for those who don’t believe that prostitution laws inherently lead to the exploitation of sex workers. A prominent activist, Tara Burns, is leading a sex workers rights group, Community United for Safety and Protection (CUSP), that is lobbying for the state to close a loophole that allows undercover police officers to have sex with prostitutes during their investigations. Burns has a history of illustrating the absurdity and hypocrisy of her state’s prostitution laws, including cases in which women have been convicted of “trafficking” themselves.

It’s difficult to believe in the prohibition of sex work when so many government officials are guilty of committing this crime. Fairly often, off-duty police are swept up in undercover stings. There were no such headlines this week, but there were two stories involving prosecutors (one current assistant district attorney and one former district attorney) who were standing trial for solicitation of prostitution.   

Numerous law enforcement officers are abusing their roles as “saviors” against sex trafficking. As a matter of fact, Alaska isn’t the only state that claims that it’s necessary for the police to have sex with prostitutes in order to protect them from trafficking. Last Friday, Hawaii’s state introduced a bill that would decriminalize prostitution and close the loophole that allows police officers to have sex with prostitutes during their investigations. Unlike Alaska, Hawaii’s loophole was a story of national interest dating back to 2014. Despite the negative publicity surrounding that story, no lawmaker has publicly championed this bill, nor does it appear likely to pass. The author of the proposal, House Speaker Joseph Souki, is publicly neutral on the issue and he points out that he wrote the bill as a favor to a persistent activist, Tracy Ryan, who lobbied the legislature to write a similar proposal ten years ago.

There would be much more support for this bill if the media presented a more fair and balanced approach to the prostitution debate. For example, a study was published two weeks ago in a renowned peer-reviewed medical journal, The Lancet, which concluded that countries with criminalized prostitution had significantly higher levels of HIV. There is a litany of research that comes to similar conclusions and that’s partially why the most respected health organizations, such as UNAIDS and the World Health Organization, support the decriminalization of sex work.

Likewise, the top human rights and social justice organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, support the decriminalization of sex work. In short, the stigmatization from prostitution laws minimize the fundamental human rights of sex workers. As you know, sex workers are frequently victims of violent crime because predators know that sex workers are not provided the same legal protections as the rest of society. Last Friday, a California man was sentenced to death for raping and murdering four sex workers. In this case, the police were able to track him down because he is a registered sex offender who was wearing an ankle monitor. However, the murders of sex workers often go unsolved due to their criminalized status; this is another topic that the American media does a disservice.    

In conclusion, you have to recognize progress when you see it. Far fewer media organizations are willing to propagate the Super Bowl trafficking myth, which is a step towards a more honest debate about prostitution. Hawaii’s bill is an opportunity for progress that shouldn’t be taken lightly. The positives far outweigh the negatives with decriminalization; the only issue is spreading the word.

  

America's First Safe-Injection Site is a Victory in the War on Drugs

Last Friday, Seattle became the first American city to approve a supervised injection facility for intravenous drug users. Most likely, you’ve never heard of such an idea. After all, there are only eight countries in the world that have conducted such experiments, but the results have been overwhelmingly positive.

First of all, these types of facilities are a controlled environment. There is nothing about these sites that “promotes” illegal drug use. The purpose is to reduce drug-related crime, provide clean needles to minimize the spread of HIV and hepatitis. In addition, there is professional staff on site who are always looking to provide referrals for rehabilitation services. In other words, this is the compassionate approach to solving drug addiction.

Photo (Flickr-Todd Huffman)

Every benefit of safe-injection facilities is also a net-positive for society. This approach has been proven to be more effective with reducing addiction rates and it saves the taxpayers money. For example, the city of San Francisco conducted a study and concluded that this would save their municipality over $3.5 million per year. San Francisco is one of a few other cities that are considering this approach, including New York City and Ithaca, NY.

Most important, these facilities save lives. We’ve seen opioid overdose deaths hit unprecedented levels in recent years. With that in mind, safe-injection facilities are all stocked with the life-saving medication naloxone. This drug is nearly 100% effective with reversing opioid overdoses as long as it is administered within a short period of time after the overdose began occurring. The results speak for themselves. There are approximately 90 safe-injection sites throughout the world and there has never been a single overdose death in one of these facilities. Not one. Albeit, overdoses are fairly common, but none of those have ever lead to a death in a safe-injection facility.

I’ll have much more information in a full-length article that gives more specifics, provides historical context, political background, etc. But, for now, rest assured that this new controversial choice is a victory in the war on drugs.

Mexico's Failed 10-Year Drug War & Why America Supports It

InSight Crime, a non-profit research organization that focuses on the drug trade in Latin America, published an eye-opening story on Monday. Reading the full story is worth your time as it offers specific details of how one of Mexico’s most powerful cartels, Los Zetas, has corrupted influential politicians. That includes bribes of $2 million a month to the governor of Coahuila, a Mexican state that borders Texas along the Rio Grande. In the same evening of InSight’s report, Los Zetas took credit for a mass shooting at a popular electronic music festival in the touristy city of Playa del Carmen, which is roughly 40 miles south of Cancun. 

Needless to say, Los Zetas traffic drugs with very little government interference. Likewise, they commit violence with military precision. The reason being, their organization was founded by former members of Mexican Special Forces. In fact, several of them received training in Fort Benning, GA at a counternarcotics program that was once known as the “School of the Americas.” The name of this program was later changed to the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC)” as public relations gesture because countless violent acts have been attributed to graduates from this program. 

Los Zetas have the highest number of former military members in their ranks. However, that doesn’t mean that other cartels don’t have links with the military. In 2006, the former President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, made a fateful decision to have the military begin enforcing their country’s drug laws. That the turned the metaphor “drug war” into an actual war on the Mexican people. The numbers are staggering. Roughly 80,000 Mexican citizens have been murdered in violence directly attributed to the drug war. We don’t know the exact figures because the Mexico government no longer publishes those statistics. Another 26,000 people have disappeared and are missing. Also, an approximate number of 281,000 Mexicans are considered internally displaced citizens (IDCs) within their own country since 2011 due to the violence. All in all, this is clear evidence that backs up Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’s claim that the drug war may be more harmful than all of the wars in the world. He made that statement last December while accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. Coincidentally, his speech took place one day before the 10-year anniversary of Mexico’s drug war.

There is no rule of law in Mexico in large part due to the corruption that has manifested from the drug war. Simply put, a large percentage of the police are the cartels’ payroll. Astoundingly, 98.5% of all crimes go unpunished in Mexico. Therefore, adding the military as another layer of law enforcement in that type of environment is like pouring gasoline on a fire. Case in point, Mexico’s Secretary of Defense, General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, essentially acknowledged that fact by stating that militarizing the drug war was a “mistake.”  

  

The U.S. government has provided $2.5 billion of military aid for the drug war since 2008. (Photo-Wikimedia Commons)

Torture has now become commonplace with the military leading several law enforcement responsibilities in the country. As a result, there is often no need for a jury or judge; the military unofficially acts as the executioner. Statistics show that Mexico’s Special Forces kill approximately thirty people for every one person they injure. That is not acting out of self-defense; those are government sanctioned death squads. For example, in June of 2014, the military murdered 22 men in a warehouse in Tlatlaya. Investigators deciphered that evidence was tainted afterward to make it appear that this was a two-sided battle, which it was not. Nevertheless, none of those murderers were convicted for this crime.  

The victims of that massacre were an unsympathetic group, a vicious gang Los Guerreros Unidos, which has committed massacres of their own, the well-publicized massacre of 43 students in Iguala. Understandably, you may be thinking that it’s necessary for the government to use this kind of force to fight with fire. However, let’s look at this issue from a practical standpoint, let alone put aside the moral implications from state-sanctioned extrajudicial murders. In the best case scenario, the military commits a massacre in an honest attempt to crack down on drug trafficking. However, gangland murders always lead to more violence because it creates a power vacuum in which rival gangs battle for turf. On the other hand, in the worst case scenario, the military is killing gang members to snuff out competition. And that is often the case. In many instances, corrupt military officers are acting as enforcers for gangs, government officials, or wealthy businessmen. 

Anyone who speaks out against the Mexican government puts their life in danger. That includes journalist, political organizers, human rights activists, etc. Human rights violations have increased over 1000% since the Mexican drug war was militarized in 2006. However, some American leaders have taken notice, such as Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). He has been one of the few members to call for cutting off Mexico’s military foreign aid until their human rights record improves. Yes, our tax dollars are actively contributing to this horrific issue. The U.S. government has paid for a program known as the Merida Initiative that has provided over $2.5 billion worth of military aid to Mexico since 2008. Worst of all, our government is fully aware that this program is counterproductive as it has had no noticeable effect on the Mexican drug trade. However, as detailed in my past posts about Honduras and Colombia, our government is more concerned with geopolitics than the drug war. 

Our government continues providing military aid through “counternarcotics” programs to Latin American countries with atrocious human rights records. The Cold War is officially over, but these anti-drug programs serve as a way to unofficially fight against the spread of communism without declaring war. Keep in mind, there is a strong contingency of leftist populism throughout Latin America. Look no further than the mass protests and riots in Mexico from two weeks ago after gas prices rose 20% because the government began reducing oil subsidies. As one U.S. News & World Report contributor recently pondered, “Could it lead to a ‘Mexican spring?’” There are several old-school hardliners in the U.S. government who still subscribe to the domino theory. Consequently, they view these kinds of developments and consciously overlook the atrocities committed by the Mexican military in hopes that it will suppress a communist uprising.   

So can anything be done to reduce the violence from the drug war? The answer is to legalize marijuana and decriminalize the more dangerous drugs. With that said, we don’t live in a utopian society. It’s unrealistic to believe that these gang members will immediately pack up their bags and join the straight and narrow path. Several of these drug trafficking gangs are truly sophisticated organized crime outfits. They make money from other illegal activities, such as extortion, robbery, illegal mining, etc. Therefore, ending the drug war won’t eliminate the black market crime problem in Latin America, but removing the profits of illegal drugs will drastically reduce the corruption with the military, police, and politicians who enable the drug trade. Consequently, the current gang population will eventually dwindle and future recruits will be much less inclined to enter into the life of crime without the lure of easy drug money.

To sum up, there is far more to the drug war than meets the eye. The consequences are horrific within our own borders, but if the United States were to end the drugs it would have an absolutely remarkable impact on the world.