To feed men and not to love them is to treat them as if they were barnyard cattle. To love them and not respect them is to treat them as if they were household pets. – Mencius
Neither of the items I’ll share with you today are directly about the criminalization of sex work, but both of them bear on the currently-leading rhetoric used to justify its violent suppression, namely the “prostitution is harmful to women so the state has the right to overrule adult decisions at gunpoint” model. Now, I don’t accept this monstrous lie for one second; prostitution is certainly bad for some women, but the fact that Olivia gets horrible cramps if she eats ice cream doesn’t justify banning it and smashing down people’s doors to search their freezers and haul them off to jail if so much as an empty carton is discovered in the garbage. But I’m going to play the role of devil’s advocate here; what if it really were terribly bad for most people, like some hard drugs? Would the state then have the right to raid brothels and force women into “rehabilitation centers”, a la Somaly Mam? As Amy Alkon reports, Dr. Alex Stevens says no:
All drug use is not abuse. Yet, people caught using drugs are often given no choice but to go into “treatment.” This is like catching me drinking a glass of wine and forcing me to go to rehab for it…[an essay by] Alex Stevens, Ph.D., “The Ethics and Effectiveness of Coerced Treatment of People Who Use Drugs,” [states]:
There are two types of coerced treatment. The first occurs when people who use drugs are ordered into treatment with no opportunity to provide informed consent to such treatment. This will be called compulsory treatment. The second type occurs when drug users are given a choice of going to treatment or facing a penal sanction that is justified on the basis of crimes for which they have been (or may be) convicted. This will be called quasi-compulsory treatment (QCT).
The first of the three types of person who uses drugs includes those who use drugs but who have not committed other crimes, and do not meet diagnostic criteria for drug dependence (‘non-problematic drug users’). This group includes the majority of people who use illicit drugs. Most of them will discontinue drug use without any need for treatment. Only a small minority will go on to need treatment to help them give up drugs, or to reduce the harm that their drug use causes.
The conclusion:
This article has argued that it is very unlikely that compulsory treatment can be considered ethical for any category of person who uses drugs, outside of the ‘exceptional, crisis’ situations allowed for under the UN Office on Drugs and Crime/World Health Organization review. It has been argued that quasi-compulsory treatment may be considered ethical (under some specific conditions) for drug dependent offenders who have committed criminal offences for whom the usual penal sanction would be more restrictive of liberty than the forms of treatment that they are offered as a constrained, quasi-compulsory choice. It has briefly reviewed research that suggests that QCT may be as effective as treatment that is entered into voluntarily. This may help individuals to reduce their drug use and offending and to improve their health, but it is unlikely to have large effects on population levels of drug use and crime.
Alkon goes on to discuss the moral and practical absurdity of destroying the lives of casual marijuana users, and though that’s worth reading it diverges from the main point I want to make: Stevens argues that forced “rehabilitation” of drug users, even those who are chemically dependent on the nastier sorts of drugs, is both unethical and useless unless A) the user is in a life-or-death crisis-type situation, or B) the user has committed actual criminal offenses (such as theft or assault) and is allowed to enter rehab as an alternative to prison. Even if (devil’s advocate) prostitution were as bad as a cocaine habit, I submit that the same standards of morality and efficacy apply, as demonstrated by the fact that most women “rescued” by force from even seedy, exploitative brothels try to escape custody and return to their work as quickly as possible.
Because the exploitation of people with limited options is enabled by criminal laws and government restrictions, decriminalization is the true solution to most problems found in criminalized or suppressed sex industries. But just as with drugs, the US government is too invested in its fascist police state to even discuss decriminalization despite evidence that it works for drugs as it does for sex. And since it can’t back up its position on either one with facts, it simply lies instead:
…the Center for American Progress…[gave] an open-armed welcome to Gil Kerlikowske, the sitting Drug Czar, to tout the “new” drug control policy of the Obama Administration…as pointed out by respected drug law reform champion Ethan Nadelmann, the “new” White House strategy [which] the talk was meant to promote is a change in rhetoric but not much else…Kerlikowske…was clear that any talk of legalization would not be entertained. He wasted no time straw-manning the arguments of drug reformers, saying that advocates believe legalization is a “silver bullet” that would make the nation’s drug problems disappear–which no one [seriously] says or believes…Furthermore, the Czar added, legalization…is “not humane, compassionate, or realistic”…The way he tells it, you’d think the government was fighting a large, cold-blooded and ruthless force as strong as the drug cartels–who, of course, have all the incentive to maintain drug prohibition–instead of a few dedicated people whose strongest weapons are truth and the compassion he claims we lack.
[Kerlikowske claimed that legalization arguments] “are not grounded in science”…but the government refuses to allow the study [of marijuana]…[he stated that] “…health, workplace, and criminal justice cost of drug abuse to American society totaled over $193 billion [last year]…Contributing to the immense cost are the millions of drug offenders under supervision in the criminal justice system”…keeping human beings in cages is expensive. Law enforcement is expensive. Lost wages from job termination resulting from drug charges is expensive. Supporting people who can’t get jobs after non-violent drug convictions is expensive. All of these are direct results of drug prohibition…”look how much money we’re spending on this” is not a cohesive argument when your detractors say you should be spending the time, effort, and money elsewhere.
[Kerlikowske also touted drug diversion programs, but their] effectiveness ranges from “okay” to “terrible.” Depending on the state and jurisdiction, drug courts may require plea agreements, whose violation triggers automatic and often severe jail time, and usually it is not appealable. Many violations are the result of failed drug tests…It is hard to imagine designing a program that would be more effective at setting addicts up for failure. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers did a two-year nationwide study interviewing people from all aspects of drug courts to measure their effectiveness and adverse consequences. They found that while many people have benefited from drug courts…the programs have been susceptible to other problems, such as “cherry picking” defendants to boost success numbers…Putting people who don’t really need treatment into treatment inflates success statistics while people with severe problems are left out because they may fail on their first try, harming success rates and increasing the risk of criminal penalty for failing…That the man who oversees the national operation to keep people in cages is appealing to pity in order to defend inadequate solutions to a broken system would be comical if not so damned tragic…
The author, Jonathan Blanks, has a great deal else to say about this supposed “policy reform”, but I think you get the picture. Forcing people into cages for making choices of which the state disapproves is the same regardless of whether those cages are labeled “rehabilitation” or “prison”. The problem is prohibition, not the behaviors prohibitionists oppose, and until “authorities” admit that we’re going to keep seeing these same brutal, evil, useless and wasteful variations on the same old totalitarian theme.
One Year Ago Today
“May Miscellanea (Part Two)” examines two examples of pearl-clutching prudery and reports on cops cavorting with drag queens and attacking migrants with laser beams.
One example of what trying to force people into behaving ‘right’ can lead to is what has happened with Finnish alcohol use during the last two centuries. During the early 19th century Finns used less alcohol than any other European nation (about two liters of pure alcohol/person/year). At that time making it was free (well, taxed but anybody could do it), distilling strong spirits in homes was common, especially on the countryside it was done as a matter of fact. And there was fairly strong social control – taking a drink or two was seen as normal and acceptable, and beer was normally used with meals, but drinking in excess was not, and it seems people rarely did.
Then, first, distilling by private citizens was outlawed, possibly because forcing people to buy commercially made strong spirits meant more tax money. Then, helped some Christian movements which saw any alcohol use as a sin becoming popular, there rose teetotaler and moderation societies which pushed for increasing control. One myth which came to be during those years was the idea of Finns having low tolerance for alcohol, since we still drank less than any other European nation the people pushing for all those restrictions needed some ideological tools they could use when arguing.
We got our Prohibition 1919, which of course meant smuggling and all other kinds of lawlessness. The Prohibition was repealed 1932, and the state liquor store chain Alko was born. For decades after that getting liquor was actually more difficult than it had been during the Prohibition.
You still can’t buy hard liquor here from anywhere else but Alko. All types of beer and weak wines can at least now be found in normal stores (and I’m old enough to remember the time before that, they came to stores only a few decades ago, before that you had to go to Alko for anything but the weakest beers).
And Finns became hard drinkers. (Although it seems that now, when liquor is easier to get this is slowly starting to change with the younger generations.)
Heh. This was probably not what those teetotaler societies back then were after, but by being successful in their aim to make obtaining alcohol legally either difficult or, for a while, impossible, they managed to change the culture of rather moderate use into one of ‘when you get it you drink all of it, unless you pass out first, and passing out is a badge of honor’ one.
Thank you for posting this, Poh; over and over again, around the world, we see that prohibition of anything not only increases the prohibited behavior, but also causes a host of new problems.
You’re welcome.
And right.
Apparently, Kristoff is now launching a campaign against Anheuser-Busch because they sell beer to American Indians. If we’re lucky, maybe this will make the racism behind his paternalism obvious to even more people.
Yes, I “tweeted” on that yesterday and will mention it in next week’s TW3. It’s a huge miscalculation on his part, and will hasten his departure into irrelevancy.
Very similar to Norway. In fact, it’s so difficult and expensive to get hard liquor in Norway that me and my crew each stash two bottles of some kind of spirit in our suitcases prior to the trip so we can supply the alcohol for our crew and the Norwegian crew at the end of mission party.
However, on my last trip – due to new rules the Norwegians have to follow – they aren’t allowed to drink a single drop of alcohol from the time they leave their home for one of our missions until the time they return to their home – which can be 30-40 days later. So we had all this alcohol and no one to drink it with.
Well, I accidentally knocked the shit out of one of the Norwegians with some handling equipment during an operation – he was standing behind me with no safety helmet – and when I’m on point I’m moving like a muthahmmama. He started screaming in Norwegian while holding his head – I asked one of the other Vikings what the hell he was screaming and the guy said … “All I could understand was ‘goat fucker'”
I felt bad so I gave him my two bottles of alcohol – one was a bottle of commercial moonshine (Virginia Lighting) and the other was Kentucky Bourbon (Buffalo Trace). He loves me now!!
A doctor I used to know said that teetotalers and addicts have the same views: they think people have no control over their use of anything, and will just dive right in and consume as much as they can if they get access to it. So it’s no surprise that if you let the teetotalers get in charge, people will start binging.
Setting up strawmen and burning them down is kind of what the Obama administration does. 🙁
Why not a little experiment? What do they have to fear? We have almost a century of scientific study on pakalolo and it all tells us that it’s safer than alcohol. I have never seen a story in my local newspaper … “Man High on Mary Jane crashes car into Four Kids” – or anything like that.
Why not just decriminalize it since states like California are already making a laughing stock of federal pakalolo enforcement?
Decriminalize it and see what happens – monitor the results of that.
LOL – funny story. When I was a baby submariner in sub school – the granddaddy of all submariners was a guy named “Master Chief Kuhn”
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1915&dat=19831104&id=JEZSAAAAIBAJ&sjid=WTYNAAAAIBAJ&pg=2168,682559
Dude was older than dirt – and had a son who was Master Chief himself. I think the Navy came out with high tenure rules specifically because Kuhn was almost 70 when he retired.
Anyway – he was highly respected in the force and he came to talk my class one day – and I got heavily in the shits because of it.
At one point – he was talking about drug usage and how bad it was for the submarine force. He actually said … “You don’t have to smoke it on the ship – what if your shipmate is driving the boat one day and he has a MARIJUANA FLASHBACK!!??”
I could not help it … I tried, GOD I tried – but the laughter just burst right out of me and Kuhn told me to “Get the fuck to to the Master Chief’s Office” … where I spent a whole hour getting my ass chewed at attention and praying they wouldn’t boot me out of the force! LOL.
They didn’t – and I shut my yap the rest of the time I was there!!
The truth is that drug prohibition is sold using the excuse that it is a public health problem, but it isn’t treated as a public health problem.
It’s treated punitively.
H. L. Menkin once said something to the effect that Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere might be having fun. That’s the guiding principal behind American vice laws, nothing to do with public health.
Of course, this gives it something in common with prostitution which is also presented as a public health problem by people who want to ban it.
This despite the fact that there are few things that promote good health as well as regular sexual activity.
Sure, you can argue that prostitution is a disease vector for STDs, but notice we don’t ban beef even though it’s a disease vector for E Coli and Mad Cow disease.
There are different methods of treating drug addiction. For example, giving someone a maintenance dose to keep them from giving in to the addiction but that won’t impair them too much. But a maintenance dose is not punitive. It doesn’t include jail time, or suffering withdrawal and it might actually help someone live a useful, productive life. So we can’t have that!
“What experience and history teach is this – that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.” — Hegel
Just how can governments and people be so willfully blind; prohibition of those things that people enjoy doesn’t mean that they go away; they go underground. And have they never heard of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Or is it that moral compulsion overcomes all common sense?
Leftists don’t actually care about what the poor and minorities WANT at all. They just pay lip service to them to get elected, then pursue nanny-statist policies designed to guarantee that there will be plenty of poor people around to re-elect them.
Yeah, just look at how the liberal War on Poverty created more poor people to vote for liberals, by raising the poverty rate from 17% to 11%.
And the righties have such a good record on this, huh? Sorry to burst your bubble, but this idiocy is on both sides of the political spectrum, and in the middle too.
How much easier life would be if all bad things could be avoided just by avoiding “leftists” or “conservatives” or “left-handed people who wear glasses” or whatever.
Above statement to jdgalt.
Banning drugs is quite bizarre, really. Every substance is toxic at a certain dose, even water; and it is perfectly legal to buy glue, deodorant etc., yet solvent abuse can be instantly fatal.
Applying the logic of prohibitionism on a consistent basis would result in virtually everything being banned.
That’s Obama for you: “I’m going to do the same thing as every other politician–but look over here, at my cute kids and cute dog! Don’t you want to vote for me?”
@jdgalt
It is virtually impossible for any real Leftist to get elected in the United States today, and as such cannot dictate public policy in any manner.
I’m assuming that you’re referring to the likes of Clinton and Obama when you say the word “leftist”. Well, it is my pleasure to inform you that Clinton and Obama are actually neo-conservatives, not Leftists. Any Leftist who manages to get elected is marginalized out of existence pretty quickly.
And it’s not just Leftists who are marginalized. Look at Ron Paul.
The entire Democratic party fits my definition of leftist. (Not “liberal” or “progressive” because those are the adjectives of liberty and progress, and leftists are dead set against both.)
I can declare that the entire Republican party fits my definition of “hula-dancing Eskimos,” but that doesn’t mean anything other than that my definition is crap.
If Obama is a neo-conservative – I shudder to think of what a real leftist is and I’ll go to bed tonight PRAYING that we never elect one in the US.
Obama is a fascist, just as the last several presidents have been.
I’ve never understood the great drive some people have to prevent others from having fun. If a substance isn’t going into your body, then it’s none of your business. It would be much better if we focused our attention on all those substances we ingest unknowingly, or without our consent such as additives, and pollutants.
As for prohibition, what would the world be without the pub? One of the things I miss most when living in the states is the lack of proper pubs. Alcohol and drugs have been a great blessing to the human race.
There are plenty of fun-ruiners on both the left and right.
But Susan’s right, there aren’t any real leftists in the US government just now.
I can’t understand it either. I’m practically a teetotaler, but I can’t imagine why that would make me want to tell other people they can’t drink.
And I agree with y’all about the leftists; with a few straggling exceptions, the US government is entirely populated with fascists now no matter what party they claim.
Who’s an example of a real leftist?
I tend to think the whole entire Congressional Black Caucus is pretty damned leftist. They’re all huge supporters of nationalizing the oil companies and big Fidel Castro supporters as well.
The American Communist Party backs the Democrats …
http://www.wnd.com/2011/08/329449/
True – they’ve often said the Democrats aren’t “leftists” – but this is a sibling quarrel much akin to the one between guys like Mark Levin and Limbaugh and folks like Peggy Noonan and David Frum – they’re right wingers all the same though.
Save for a few Blue Dog Democrats who stopped it (and they’ve been mostly exterminated politically now) – this nation would already have a Socialized Single-Payer Health Care System. So I don’t know – but this thing seems to walk and quack like a duck.