The “War on Drugs” has been a primary driver of mass criminalization, incarceration, and law enforcement violence targeting Black people over the past five decades, devastating families, communities, and generations. Prostitution enforcement has consistently served as a mechanism for profiling, pathologization, targeting, physical and sexual violence, criminalization, and structural exclusion for Black women, trans, and gender nonconforming people, and regulation of sexual and reproductive autonomy. Both the drug war and prostitution enforcement divert millions of dollars away from meeting the needs of people with substance dependence and people in the drug and sex trades, including non-coercive, accessible, and evidence-based treatment, housing, health care, education, and living wage employment.
Immediately and retroactively decriminalize drug and prostitution-related offenses and invest savings into programs and services identified by people in the drug and sex trades, and implement a full and comprehensive reparations package for people, families, and communities harmed by the drug war and criminalization of prostitution.
RETROACTIVE DECRIMINALIZATION, IMMEDIATE RELEASE, AND RECORD EXPUNGEMENT FOR ALL DRUG RELATED OFFENSES AND PROSTITUTION, REPARATIONS FOR THE DEVASTATING IMPACTS OF THE “WAR ON DRUGS” AND THE CRIMINALIZATION OF PROSTITUTION, AND REINVESTMENT IN COMMUNITY-BASED TRANSFORMATIVE APPROACHES TO HARM, HEALTH SERVICES, HOUSING, JOB PROGRAMS, AND OTHER PROGRAMS BASED ON THE NEEDS IDENTIFIED BY INDIVIDUALS AND COMMUNITIES IMPACTED BY THE SEX AND DRUG TRADES.
Throughout U.S. history, drug and prostitution-related laws have consistently been used to criminalize Black people and communities. Criminalization of marijuana and cocaine was achieved through the deployment of racist tropes depicting drug-crazed, sexually predatory, and superhumanly violent Black people, in spite of the fact that both drugs were widely used at the time by white people.
Black women, trans, and gender nonconforming people have systematically been framed as sexually promiscuous, deviant, and available to justify the structural sexual violence that fueled the slave trade. After the formal end of slavery, Black women were disproportionately profiled, targeted, and often brutally arrested for prostitution-related offenses and returned to domestic servitude through convict leasing in an attempt to regain control over their reproductive and sexual autonomy.
Statements by U.S. government officials confirm that the “War on Drugs” declared in the 1970s was a cover for targeting Black communities in the midst of increased resistance to police profiling, harassment, and violence, and the growing power of Black liberation and anti-war movements. At the same time, criminalization of poverty and Black motherhood, as well as drastic cuts to social service programs, were achieved based on gendered anti-Black criminalizing narratives of “welfare queens” and “crack hos,” while prostitution enforcement intensified in the context of aggressive “urban renewal,” “broken windows” policing, and gentrification efforts.
Against this backdrop, drug and prostitution law enforcement often operate in tandem – enforced by the same vice units, using many of the same tactics, against the same people, deploying similar criminalizing narratives, imposing punishment instead of support. This is true in spite of the fact that not all people who use drugs trade sex, and not all people who trade sex use drugs.
Separately and together, drug and prostitution enforcement have driven systemic and widespread racial profiling, discriminatory enforcement, physical and sexual violence, extortion and abuse, gross sentencing disparities, and mass criminalization, incarceration, institutionalization, civil commitment, detention, deportation, and exclusion of Black people over the past 50 years. The drug war and enforcement of poverty and “public order” offenses such as prostitution have played a central role in making Black women the fastest growing prison and jail populations over this time frame, and in driving family separation through the criminal punishment and child welfare systems. Drug and prostitution laws have also consistently been used to exclude and deny Black people access to housing, employment, education, family, social services and benefits, immigration status, and community, while simultaneously failing to address the needs of people struggling with substance use or dependence and economic survival.
Millions of people have been profiled, harassed, violated and abused, arrested, incarcerated in jails, prisons, on probation or parole, or detained, deported, civilly committed, or placed in child welfare proceedings based on drug use, possession, and sales. The vast majority of cases involve small quantities of drugs for personal use or low-level drug sales. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, in 2012,
Black people made up 38.8% of people incarcerated in federal prisons for drug offenses (99.5% related to selling and distribution). As of 2011, Black youth were 44% more likely to be arrested for drug offenses than white youth, despite reporting equal rates of drug use. In 2014, Black people were over 3 times more likely to be arrested for selling and distributing drugs, despite growing evidence that white people sell drugs at a slightly higher rate.
Black LGBTQ people are also at higher risk of being ensnared in the drug war due to higher levels of poverty, higher rates of drug use stemming from family and community rejection, structural exclusion, denial of necessary health care, and disproportionately high rates of police contact. One study found that nearly 40% of -LGB+ people used criminalized substances in the past, compared to 17% of the public. Nearly 30% of transgender and gender-nonconforming respondents to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey also report past use of criminalized substances.
Structural exclusion from formal economies drives many Black queer, trans and gender-nonconforming people into criminalized economies. Twenty-eight percent (28%) of Black respondents to the 2015 U.S. Trans Survey participated in the underground economy for income at some point in their lives, including in sex work, drug sales, and other currently criminalized work, compared to 20% of all respondents. Fourteen percent (14%) had done so in the last year, compared to 9% of all respondents.
Additionally, barriers to health care for disabled, queer, and transgender people can lead to increased self-medication, which can be charged and prosecuted as a drug-related offense. For example, a quarter of respondents to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey reported being denied coverage for transition-related hormone replacement therapy (HRT), and 33% of respondents reported avoiding healthcare services that they needed due to fear of being discriminated against by providers. When prescription HRT is out of reach, some transgender people turn to non-prescribed “street” hormones, which can lead to criminalization for possession of “drug” paraphernalia or unauthorized use of prescription medication.
Beyond incarceration, the drug war has subjected millions of people to mandatory and non-consensual drug testing, treatment, and incarceration or involuntary commitment in medical or other treatment facilities, including mandated treatment based on “junk science.” Additionally, drug treatment centers are sites of emotional, economic, physical, sexual, and other forms of violence and abuse. Conversely, countless people have been denied evidence-based medical care, including medication based support for withdrawal. Use — or even suspicion of use — places Black pregnant people and parents at risk of losing child custody and parental rights, regardless of whether there is any danger or harm to their fetuses or families.
The “War on Drugs” has also contributed to creating dangerous conditions for people who use drugs, including violence in illicit drug markets, increased overdose risk, vulnerability to sexual, physical, and other forms of violence at the hands of law enforcement officers, and denial of necessary medical treatment to people in custody, resulting in death or severe pain and suffering.
As marijuana is increasingly being decriminalized across the country, Black people with drug-related criminal convictions are being excluded from legal markets, while they continue to suffer the devastating harms and collateral consequences resulting from prior convictions, including years spent incarcerated or under criminal punishment system control for actions that are now legal.
Since its inception at the turn of the 20th century, vice policing has involved profiling and targeting Black, Native, and Asian women, who are framed as inherently promiscuous and sexually available and deviant under different logics serving anti-Black racism, colonialism, and imperialism. Prostitution laws have consistently been used to surveil, police, and criminalize Black communities, homes, and businesses. They have particularly facilitated police and community violence – including sexual violence – against Black women, trans, gender nonconforming and disabled people. Criminalization of prostitution originated and continues to be used as a basis for exclusion and deportation from the U.S.
Criminalization of the sex trade particularly impacts working class, low- and no-income Black people, and members of Black communities structurally excluded from formal economies, including Black migrants and disabled, queer, and trans people. The vast majority of people who trade sex do so in order to meet basic needs for housing, food, education, medical care, childcare, and elder care.
For instance, a quarter of Black disabled people live below the poverty line, and are often structurally excluded from formal employment. As a result, they may participate in the sex trade because it offers flexibility and accommodations jobs in formal economies do not. It can also substitute or supplement for inadequate or denied disability benefits, and to cover exorbitant medical costs.
Black women, girls, trans, and gender nonconforming people continue to make up a disproportionate number of people targeted by enforcement of prostitution-related offenses:
More than one in five (21%) Black respondents to the 2015 U.S. Trans Survey participated in sex work for income, compared to 12% of all respondents. Transgender women represent more than one- half (60%) of Black respondents who have traded sex for money in their lifetimes. Non-binary people assigned female at birth (AFAB) (18%) and transgender men (16%) also account for a significant proportion of Black queer people who trade sex to survive. More than a quarter (27%) of respondents traded sex for money, food, a place to sleep, or other goods or services.
Trans people who had lost a job due to anti-trans discrimination were 3 times more likely to engage in sex work. Of those who interacted with the police while doing or thought to be doing sex work, 90% of Black trans respondents reported some form of police harassment abuse, or mistreatment including being verbally harassed, physically attacked, or sexually assaulted by police.
Instead of meeting the basic needs that drive people into the sex trades, criminalization of prostitution-related offenses drives people in the sex trades further into poverty, closing off access to housing, employment, health care, reproductive rights, family, and community. Vice and drug law enforcement cost the U.S. billions of dollars each year that could be used to meet the needs of targeted communities-— for medical care, including voluntary, quality, low-threshold and harm reduction-based drug treatment, mental health treatment, and parental and family support, for housing, living wage employment, and basic necessities.
Over half of voters in the U.S. support decriminalizing sex work.
