[size=+1]How Sex and Drugs Can Help Stimulate Britain's Limp Economy[/size]
November 13, 2012 1:44 PM GMT
If politicians and the public can put aside long-held prejudices, then they may be able to solve some of the tough economic questions Britain has to answer by unleashing the financial power of two untapped markets: drugs and prostitution.
These multi-billion pound industries lurk in the shadows of Britain, operating at every moment of every day in every part of the country.
Ending Britain's role in the War on Drugs and its criminalisation of the sex worker industry, for many, makes perfect fiscal as well as moral sense.
"It's win, win, win," Danny Kushlick of the Transform Drugs Policy Foundation tells IBTimes UK.
"The point really is that not only are there savings from not prosecuting a futile war, and not creating the vast criminal market that goes with that, there's also the tax."
The English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), a campaigning body for the decriminalisation of prostitution, shares a similar view.
Prostitution is technically legal within British law, but it is surrounded by other rules that make it practically impossible to carry out lawfully, such as women working on the street being charged with loitering and soliciting, and that two or more women working in one property can be charged with brothel keeping.
"If prostitution was decriminalised, costs would be saved, starting with police and criminal justice resources which are currently dedicated to the surveillance, investigation, prosecution, and even imprisonment of sex workers working collectively and consensually," says Niki Adams of the ECP to IBTimes UK.
"There is no justification for squandering public money criminalising sex workers, especially at this moment in time."
Full article: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/4...y-drugs-prostitution-indsustry-costs-tdpf.htm
November 13, 2012 1:44 PM GMT
If politicians and the public can put aside long-held prejudices, then they may be able to solve some of the tough economic questions Britain has to answer by unleashing the financial power of two untapped markets: drugs and prostitution.
These multi-billion pound industries lurk in the shadows of Britain, operating at every moment of every day in every part of the country.
Ending Britain's role in the War on Drugs and its criminalisation of the sex worker industry, for many, makes perfect fiscal as well as moral sense.
"It's win, win, win," Danny Kushlick of the Transform Drugs Policy Foundation tells IBTimes UK.
"The point really is that not only are there savings from not prosecuting a futile war, and not creating the vast criminal market that goes with that, there's also the tax."
The English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), a campaigning body for the decriminalisation of prostitution, shares a similar view.
Prostitution is technically legal within British law, but it is surrounded by other rules that make it practically impossible to carry out lawfully, such as women working on the street being charged with loitering and soliciting, and that two or more women working in one property can be charged with brothel keeping.
"If prostitution was decriminalised, costs would be saved, starting with police and criminal justice resources which are currently dedicated to the surveillance, investigation, prosecution, and even imprisonment of sex workers working collectively and consensually," says Niki Adams of the ECP to IBTimes UK.
"There is no justification for squandering public money criminalising sex workers, especially at this moment in time."
Full article: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/4...y-drugs-prostitution-indsustry-costs-tdpf.htm
