Drug Abuse and Prostitution Researchers Term Paper

This despite how much money is being wasted on "the war on drugs." Making "war" militarily on a medical/social problem makes no sense. In addition to the psychological problems of individuals, social conditions contribute greatly to the problem. People who are alienated from society become addicted to drugs, as Sen. Robert Kennedy pointed out back in 1965. Solving the drug problem means "solving poverty and broken homes, racial discrimination and inadequate education, slums and unemployment" (cited in Goldberg, 2005 p. 11), not to mention child abuse. Instead, we treat prostitutes as though they were scum. A New York study has shown that the police, the courts, and their clients (johns) routinely mistreat them in a manner that violates civil liberties and human rights. This is "mirrored at the judicial level, where sex workers bear the brunt of the criminal justice system while johns usually get off relatively lightly" (Facts about prostitution web site).

Until the complex, hard-core social problems are addressed in a meaningful way, drug use will continue to be a problem. Drug use is a symptom of societal sickness, and making "war" on a symptom without addressing the disease itself is useless, expensive, and makes everything worse. Sanho Tree (Goldberg, 2005) points out that "By treating this as a criminal justice problem, our range of solutions has been sharply limited" (p. 11). In other words, we have cut ourselves off from social policies that might actually reduce the problem.

Controlled decriminalization would allow our society to seek other more productive ways to control and reduce drug abuse. If drug use were decriminalized, the problem of prostitution would decrease dramatically. The $20 billion a year we now spend on controlling drug traffic could be used more effectively to address other social problems. Effective or not, the system we now have has invested itself and is working to maintain itself. But doing more of the same will never produce a different result.

References

America's drug abuse profile web site. Retrieved 23 April 2007 from http://www.ncjrs.gov/htm/chapter2.htm.

Facts about prostution web site. Sex Workers and Civil Rights. Retrieved 22 April 2007 from http://www.rapeis.org/activism/prostitution/sexworkerscivilrights.htm

Goldberg, R. (Ed.) (2005). Taking sides: Clashing views in drugs and society, 7th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin.

Goldstein, P.J. (1979. Prostitution and drugs. Lexington, MA: Lexington

Books.

Heroin -- New York drug threat assessment. National Drug Intelligence Center. Retrieved 23 April 2007 from http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs2/2580/heroin.htm

Kerr, P. (1988). Young crack addicts find there's no help for them. New York Times. Retrieved 22 April 2007 from http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res+940DE7DC103AF931A35756COA96

Medrano, M.A., Hatch, J.P., Zule, W.A. And Desmond, D.P. (2003). Childhood trauma and adult prostitution behavior in a multiethnic heterosexual drug-using population. American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 29 (2), 463-487.

Potterat, J.J., Rothenberg, R.B., Muth, S.Q., Darrow, W.W. And Phillips-Plummer, L. (1998). Pathways to prostitution: The chronology of sexual and drug abuse milestones. The Journal of Sex Research, 35 (4), 333-348.

Yacoubian, G.S., Urbach, B.J., Larsen, K.L., Johnson, R.J. And Peters, R.J. (2000). A comparison of drug use between prostitutes and…