Prostitution

Have you ever met prostitutes or seen pornographic advertisement when you walked in Sham Shui Po? Surely it is very easy for everyone to meet them in the street especially at night. But have you thought about whether what they do should be legalized? Prostitution has been an annoying problem of Hong Kong for many years. In my opinion, it should not be legalized since it would lead to the expansion of the sex industry, human trafficking and moral decay.

One of the problems is the expansion of the sex industry. By the time prostitution is legalized, people who engaged in this immoral career- pimps will become legal businessmen and the industry will eventually expand due to the free market of prostitution. Pimps will run more brothels in order to make profits, and since it is legal, more women will become prostitutes because of the lack of labor in the industry. In Netherlands, prostitution now accounts for the 5 percent of the Netherlands economy (Danley, 2001:4). This is a huge figure since this industry plays an important role in the economy of Netherland. If the immoral industry crumbled, there would be a huge impact in the economy of Netherland. And over the last decade, as pimping became legalized and then brothels decriminalized in the Netherlands since 2000, the sex industry expanded for 25% between 2000 and 2001 (Danley, 2001:4). When the scope of the industry becomes larger and larger, more prostitutes will go on the street and start to seize the customers. This will annoy the normal residents and increase the conflicts between the industry and the residents.

With the expansion of the industry, there will be another problem - insufficiency of prostitutes. Pimps will start to find more women and make them become prostitutes. Due to the large expansion, there will not be enough local prostitutes to tackle the problem and more foreign women will be trafficked into Hong Kong. As early as 1993 in Germany, after the first steps towards legalization had been taken, it was recognized (even by pro-prostitution advocates) that 75% of the women in GermanyÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦s prostitution industry were foreigners from Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and other countries in South America (Altink, 1993 : 33). After the fall of the Berlin wall, brothel owners reported that 9 out of every 10 women in the GermayÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦s sex industry were from eastern Europe (Altink, 1993 : 43) and other former Soviet countries. Since most of the women that are trafficked from other countries are so poor, they cannot even afford the money to have their travel documents and they need to rely on the pimps. So they are controlled by the pimps and cannot easily get out of this industry. Also they do not need to bear the cost of illegal prostitution, so more women will throng to Hong Kong to seek the profit-making opportunities.

Another problem is that the legalization would lead to moral decay. Nowadays many teenagers are materialistic; they always want to earn money in easy ways. They may eventually fall into the trap of being prostitutes because they think they just need to pay a little effort then can make lots of money. Also they may think that what they do