Drug Policy Alliance’s Ethan Nadelmann will be appearing on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report on Wednesday night, not tonight as I had posted earlier. Apparently, some northeastern governor was caught engaging in a commercial act between two consenting adults which is federally prohibited because a majority has a moral problem with it*, and that news has bumped Ethan’s interview to tomorrow.
*Some may disagree with me on this point, but I can’t understand the prohibition against prostitution, either. If we believe that a person has the right to do what they want with their body with respect to the substances they put into it, so long as they harm no others, then I’d argue we have to give people the right to do what they want with their body with respect to sex and commerce.
Some argue that there is no “victimless” crime in prostitution; that the spouse is directly injured and society is indirectly injured by the blights associated with prostitution. But that same argument would then have to be accepted for outlawing marijuana smoking – that the “drug user” is directly harming his family and indirectly, society.
As with drug prohibition, the blights associated with prostitution come from the prohibition. In Nevada, where prostitution is legal in all but two counties, most of the prostitution-related harm (except, I suppose, the injured spouse) is mitigated through strict regulation – prostitutes are tested regularly and must abide by safer sexual practices. Harm reduction, not prohibition, is the only sensible reaction to controlling innate human drives like sex and taking drugs.
