THE RAVAGES OF THE DRUG WAR

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.

CRIMINALIZATION IN THE SEX TRADES

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:

• Black youth make up 62% of minors arrested for prostitution-related offenses in the U.S.
• Black and Latinx people made up 91% of arrests for “loitering for the purposes of prostitution” in New York in 2018.
• Black women are arrested for prostitution at rates 14 times greater than their representation in the population in California.

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.