THE PRICE OF SEX AND DRUGS

You can sell your body legally, we all do it. It's called having a job. But if that job entails having sex for money then you're a criminal. Even if you don't sell your body you may be in violation of all sorts of state sex laws, depending upon where you live. Sodomy is against the law, so is oral sex in many places. Homosexual sex is outlawed in a lot of states, technically designating that 5% of humanity who are born homosexual as criminals. I suppose all this sex law business started with the Puritans, a bunch of psychotic, up-tight bigots who fled persecution in England to come here and get to be the persecutors.

In their eyes no one measured up to their own moral rectitude, not even each other judging by the witch trials they conducted. While the Puritans eventually went the way of all insane fringe groups, their influence lingered and America still suffers from their warped thinking: basically that if it's fun and it feels good it must be evil. What feels good is bad, what feels right is wrong. Kind of a Bizarro World approach to life, but they've left a huge legacy here in America. All our various state, local and federal governments are in the personal behavior regulating business. Which is fine as far as outlawing assault, theft, jaywalking, murder, embezzling and the like.

That's pretty much where the government ought to stop when it comes to telling us what we can and cannot do. Why they are in the sex business hundreds of years after the Puritans fizzled out is a puzzlement. We still have all sorts of laws on the books attempting to regulate our most basic biological functions, a drive so strong that we humans go to any length to satisfy this powerful innate force. Are there any of us out there who are exceptions to this inborn rule? I have yet to meet anyone. You might as well try to outlaw being left-handed or having freckles. Outside of the crime of rape or having sex with minors the government has no business at all telling us what we can and cannot do with one another.

Humans practice an incredibly wide variety of sexual practices, some of them seemingly bizarre to many of us, but so what? Nobody's forcing you to do anything you don't want to do. It's none of our damned business what others do behind close doors. I won't get into specifics since some of the things people do while having sex I find pretty funny. Or creepy and bewildering, but that's more my problem then theirs. To them it's what they like and what satisfies them sexually so the hell with me and what I think. If something makes somebody happy and they're not hurting anybody else in the process, who is anybody to deny them that? Take all the sex laws off the books, let prostitutes work legally and in a safe environment with health regulations and let's get on with our lives.

The same with drugs. Legalize them all. There won't be one extra junkie if drugs are legal. As things stand now, 10% of the population consumes 90% of the alcoholic beverages in America. Alcohol is our most abused drug and our only legal one outside of medicines. Yet, 90% of the people don't become alcoholics. Why? Because only 10% of humanity has the disease of addiction. It's the same situation with drugs as booze, with the 10% of us who are addicts consuming 90% of the illegal drugs. So why are they illegal? Because they're fun? That's one big reason, that Puritan streak rearing its ugly head and telling us we are not allowed to feel good. At least not legally.

And then there's the money angle. There are huge industries making money from illegal drugs. I'm not talking about the drug dealers here, who by definition make large amounts of money charging high prices for products that are manufactured at very little cost. The high price is simply because of the illegality of it. Drug dealers are a group of people completely opposed to legalization. They'd have to get real jobs then. And speaking of real jobs, America had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of workers legally employed in the illegal drug trade. Whether they are judges, DEA agents, police, prison guards, District Attorneys or the guy who supplies the eggs to a prison, there's billions of dollars being spent in the drug trade in America and many thousands of jobs that will be in jeopardy if drugs are legalized.

America now imprisons 1 of every 142 people. That's 2 million people in prison, and almost half of them are there on drug charges. I suppose if alcohol was illegal we'd have another million or so behind bars. Alcohol was once illegal in America for 14 years, 1920 to 1933, and it was a disaster for the nation. Much like today's drug cartels, huge criminal gangs formed to distribute alcohol and became incredibly wealthy. They were also violent and ruthless and these gangs remain with us to this day, still murderous and still sucking money out of society illegally in a variety of ways, drugs and prostitution being a big part of their operations. By the time the ban on alcohol was repealed it was too late to un-form the organized mobs that are now unfortunately part of the fabric of America.

When alcohol became legal again there were no extra alcoholics added to the population. The same 10% were still drinking up 90% of the available supply of alcohol. Addiction is a disease, and drug addicts have the same one as alcoholics. These days most addicts are cross-addicted, mixing drugs with alcohol. And a lot of people besides drug dealers and government employees are cashing in big time on the illegal drug trade. Pharmaceutical companies are making billions producing pain killers earmarked for the illegal drug trade. Of course they have legitimate medical uses, but the drug companies produce hundreds of times more of these drugs than the medical community requires. Yet the executives of the pharmaceutical giants are not on anybody's most wanted list or subject to indictment for dealing addictive drugs.

So let private firms produce cocaine and heroin and marijuana for the masses too, and sell drugs in stores like they do with liquor. Then the huge infrastructure that deals with the so-called drug problem will have to be put to use doing other things, like maybe finally providing universal health care to this nation. And part of health care is treating addiction, which is a recognized disease. Nobody gets sent to jail for having diabetes or being in possession of high blood pressure medication. The cost of sending people to prison for victimless crimes is huge, and prisons tend to create as many criminals as they punish. The prison system is after all an industry and its raw material is people. Why would they actually want to reform anybody? Recidivists are their favorite customers.

And the people who provide food, uniforms, shoes, vending machines and a hundred other services to prisons are also making money from the illegal drug trade and would oppose changing any law that stops the flow of human bodies into a system that is their bread and butter. There are besides prisons hundreds of other state and federal agencies making big drug money, those agencies charged with enforcing the drug laws and intercepting the drugs imported from abroad or shipped state to state(To say nothing of the many millions of dollars in bribes handed out by criminals to public officials, and by pharmaceutical lobbies to members of Congress). If recreational drugs were just another industry like lumber, whiskey or dry goods these agencies would have nothing to do, no one from who they could solicit bribes and would have to be disbanded. Likewise, the court system would need fewer judges, district attorneys and court officers. Defense lawyers would also lose a lucrative clientele without those hundreds of thousands of drugs defendants they represent each year.

Defense lawyers and the court system in general would also be relieved of many thousands of prostitution cases when selling sex is finally recognized in America as the oldest profession and given equal status with any other personal services establishment. Like the alcohol industry, the sex trade and the drug businesses would be regulated, inspected and taxed. No matter what anyone thinks of their respectability, they are real businesses with a huge demand for their goods and services. A lot of people disapprove of saloons but have had no problem living their lives with so many of them around. Just pass them by if they offend you. The same with a drug emporium or a house of prostitution. Not every one's cup of tea but no one's forcing anybody to be a customer. Not everybody likes that goofy religion you practice either, don't forget, and nobody tells you not to practice it or go to jail for doing so. Tolerance is a two-way street.

And with drugs being legal the price will be fairly reasonable and the types of drug addicts who steal(relatively few, percentage-wise among drug users) to support their habits will decrease, further reducing crime and the prison population. With sex being an established industry subject to health regulations , sexually transmitted diseases will decrease as well. And these businesses being legal, there won't be one extra drug addict or one extra prostitute created. The people who go in for that sort of thing have demonstrated for eons they're going to do it no matter what society and the laws say. Being legal or illegal is irrelevant, people do what they do, what they have always done, before there were Puritans, before there was an America, before there was anything we know today. And being that these two behaviors are victimless crimes, well, why are they crimes, then? Doesn't a crime imply a perpetrator and a victim?

In America, a lot of people own guns. If they moved to another country and still had those guns they'd be considered a criminal, even though they hadn't changed a bit from the law abiding good citizen they've always been. In other countries American women would be arrested for dressing the way they do or walking in public unaccompanied by a male relative, or by driving a car or simply expressing an opinion. Those laws seem reasonable to the people who live in those countries but to us they are an aberration, an infringement on individual rights. Why is marginalizing and criminalizing drug users and prostitutes any less aberrant? And how dare anybody outlaw homosexuality or restrict the basic human rights of homosexuals, our fellow human beings?

This is a nation of laws and a nation that prides itself on allowing broad individual freedom. Singling out small percentages of our population for persecution is not American. Nobody said you have to approve or join in, you just have to mind your own damned business and expect the other guy to mind his. Because if the other guys doesn't have any rights, then you could be next when a bunch of Puritans decide to pass another law and it just so happens that your way of life is being criminalized and now you're a criminal. It's happened before and could happen again.

Look at the benefits to America if only marijuana was made legal. Already the nation's second largest cash crop, now it would be grown openly in some states that have an ideal climate for its cultivation and the huge revenues could be taxed and brought into the mainstream economy. The same can be done for narcotic drugs and other recreational drugs, processing them properly and safely, regulating them as is done with the liquor industry. The billions of under-the-table dollars involved in the drug trade will now become part of the general economy, taxed and circulating among honest people doing their jobs. The untold billions in untaxed profits and bribes will be no more. The billions will still be there, but as part of the common economy.

The same will hold true for a legal sex industry. Who knows how much money changes hands in sex-for-sale transactions? Nobody seems to know. We do know that so many of the assignations are conducted in dangerous and unhealthy conditions in a business dominated by unscrupulous pimps. When an industry is outlawed the thugs take over and when thugs run things they are the main beneficiaries of the income stream generated by others, namely the ladies who provide the sexual services. And thugs are violent and ruthless, so why allow them to control a thriving business? Again, another huge underground economy will become part of the overall national economy.

The industry will be regulated, sanitary and safe and the government will gets its fair share of the taxes on the money changing hands. Just like drugs, sex for sale cannot be stopped and will never be stopped. The "war on drugs" was doomed from the start and the war on prostitution has met with the same success it has enjoyed since the oldest profession began, that is, none at all. When will we stop trying to command the tides? And worse, squandering billions and billions of dollars and channeling the life's efforts of untold people into that futile exercise. How would you like to be the cop assigned to changing the course of the Mississippi River? As dedicated and talented as you might be, at the end of your career your life's work will have amounted to nothing at all, that river still flowing north to south as always. You might start thinking there are better ways to contribute to society and more satisfying professions.

You need not condone prostitution, drug use, homosexuality or anything else you don't fell like condoning, that's your business, but you can't outlaw what is none of your affair so long as it's not harming anybody else. That's the way of the Puritans, the Ayatollahs, the tyrants and the fascists. It is not American to persecute and criminalize our fellow citizens, our fellow human beings. You can be who you want to be here, that's the beauty of America. But the flip side of having the freedom to be whoever the hell you want to be no matter who likes it or not is letting the other guy have that same freedom whether you like it or not. And if that person is a drug fiend to you or a dirty whore in your mind, well, that's life. Not yours, theirs, and you don't have to be them, just let them be. Odds are they'll return the favor.