As for traffiking...that's a whole different story. Human traffiking isn't ok and should be stopped. I wonder why they tied all those things together in one Proposition? So it failed?

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Legalization in the Netherlands and Germany has led to increased forced and child prostitution because it is easier to make false documents for a woman to work in a legal brothel than to hide a totally illegal activity. 70+% of the sex workers in both countries are foreign.

When you test sex workers but not the johns, you are protecting the johns, not the sex workers. They still face a risk of transmission. It is treating sex workers as the vectors of disease rather than part of the cycle of disease, which I don't find progressive.

I don't think legalized prostitution works, but really my objection is moral. I think there are some things you shouldn't be able to sell (organs, children, sex) because the fact that you are willing to sell them suggests that you are in such dire straits that you aren't really making a free decision. There are a lot of blogs by educated, together prostitutes but the research out there shows that most prostitutes are in have a history of sexual abuse, substance abuse or mental health issues far above the national average. I've visited a bunch of pro-sex work blogs run by sex workers and all of the ones I read included a post about the number of times pre-sex work they'd been raped. I don't think that's just a coincidence and I'm not comfortable with the government profiting off a profession that is so fueled by past abuse.

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The ladies have their areas (Karangahape Road in Auckland, and Manchester St in Christchurch) that they frequent and solict from, but a lot seem to now work from home.

The only real problem of its now is where do the brothels go- people are complaining when they are in centre of town, but they are prevented from being in the 'burbs.
But other than that, it seems to be working well. +1 for the Labour Gov on this point!

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I was and am for the legalisation of prostitution as a means of providing legal rights and protection to sex workers. Obviously it has existed since the Bible, yet all these years where prostitution has been illegal have done little to protect the workers or prevent its existence.

While I don't entirely buy into the empowerment argument for pornography and prostitution, the idea that sex workers face prosecution and social denigration for itching a scratch that their johns rarely do is unfuckingfair.

Also, if prostitution is legalised, it allows organisations to be above the table, opening them up to government regulation (hence the laws regarding sexual health). It also ensures that workers are entitled to rights, which although I can't guarantee they necessarily receive, at least provides them with the protection of the legal system God forbid should they ever need it.

In my philosophy class last year, we had a guest speaker from the Prostitutes Collective who spoke about how the UN was still teaching women in South East Asia classes

on flower arrangement as a means to prevent them from entering the sex industry; that shit is obvs. ignorant. The reasons people enter the sex industry are vast and varied, but need they suffer legal as well as social discrimination? Obviously prostitution will never really go away but at least by legalising it, we can hope to reform it, providing rights to the sex workers in the process. That is something I'd like to see in action.

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I second (third? fourth?) the idea of cracking down on pimping. I would also add that if authorities are serious about cracking down on trafficking in persons, then they should apply the same penalties to that as they do to people who traffic in narcotics or arms. (in the US, drug dealers can get all their assets seized and can serve up to a life sentence).

Hey - it looks like we're stuck with the War on Drugs and the PATRIOT Act, we may as well use them to do some good in the world.

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