World’s oldest profession must remain an illegal one

The vice squad used to be something a police department would have — cops dedicated to going after things like gambling, drugs and prostitution. Today the vice squad is your state government — officials dedicated to legalizing things like gambling, drugs and prostitution.

Go to a corner store and you see the great job the state has done with what one calls “the numbers racket” when the mob does it but “the lottery” when the state does it. Inundated with ads touting “a dollar and a dream,” poor and workingclass saps dump dollar after dollar into scratchoffs and quick picks, flooding Albany with cash on top of the taxes we pay.

Now we’ve got the marijuana mess our wise leaders have sparked, legalizing it but insisting only licensed dealers can sell it (and to get a license you must have a criminal record or a close relative who does!) and rolling out the process too slowly. The free market wasn’t slow, with an estimated 1,400 illegal shops popping up across the city virtually overnight. The only people who couldn’t see that coming are the ones who “humbly seek your vote” every couple years.

And now some of those folks want to decriminalize prostitution — or sex work, as they’ve been calling it in an effort to legitimize it and prepare you for what’s coming. One

Queens lawmaker, Democratic Assemblywoman Jessica González-Rojas of Jackson Heights, is sponsoring the bill.

Wait, you might think, don’t we already have enough prostitution on Roosevelt Avenue, on Starr Street, in the hotels and massage parlors? Do we really need to encourage more by basically legalizing it? Do we really need to aid Asian organized crime and Mexican drug cartels by making it easier for them to sex traffick underage girls? Do we really need to say, “It’s legal, it’s none of my business,” and look away as guys hand out “chica chica” cards with pictures of girls and phone numbers on them to drum up business? Do we need to look the other way as troubled young women descend from stripping to Only Fans to turning tricks?

It’s amazing how glib the advocates are about prostitution, speaking as if it’s just another profession. Decriminalization “takes away all the criminalized aspects of sex workers just doing their job,” said an activist and former prostitute known as SX Noir, according to NY1. “And what this will do is allow sex workers to have better access to housing, to medical resources and ultimately just living their lives.”

But then NY1 quotes Alex Wilson, associate counsel for the New York State Sheriff’s Association, as saying that not adding regulation, as in Nevada, but instead “creating essentially an open market, or a free market for the type of conduct described in the bill, could present problems.”

We’ve got the state pushing you to throw money away on lottery tickets — and now sports betting too, with $16 billion wagered in the first year. We’ve got the state legalizing pot and saying it wants to “lead the nation in advancing the science of cannabis and dismantling the stigma surrounding cannabis” while wreaking havoc by giving illegal dealers the impression they could set up shop in stores. And now the state might encourage and destigmatize prostitution.

Proponents say legalization is the best way to protect the mostly young women who engage in sex work from all the problems prostitutes have faced since the beginning of time: the beatings, the trafficking, the theft of money, the discarding as they age. Don’t buy it. As the group Demand Abolition says, on a web page linking to dozens of studies: “Countries that have legalized or decriminalized commercial sex often experience a surge in human trafficking, pimping, and other related crimes. Prostitution, regardless of whether it’s legal or not, involves so much harm and trauma it cannot be seen as a conventional business.” Keep it illegal.

Lettersto The Editor

Stress-A-Ride

Deirdre Bardolf Editor

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Dear Editor:

Thank you for the excellent article on Access-A-Ride or more like Stress-A-Ride (“The paratransit woes of NYC’s disabled,” March 2, multiple editions). I’ve waited from two to five or six hours for them at times.

The problem I have now is from the time of the pandemic. I go to the Dollar Tree store every Sunday since then, but the problem is that when I call in the correct address — 250-80 Jericho Tpke. in Bellerose, Queens — AAR’s archaic GPS system says it doesn’t exist. But if I give them a “wrong” address — 250 Jericho Tpke. in Bellerose — where the store doesn’t exist, it shows the store is there, according to Google. In Suite 80! Try getting AAR to correct this — forget it!

The store is in the Queens County side, not the Nassau County side.

So I go to the “correct address,” with the cross street info and landmarks and there’s no problem. It’s when they have to pick me up that the trouble ensues. The drivers go to the wrong address and they don’t even call in to the dispatchers that there is no store at that address, only what used to be a Floral Park movie theater which is now a catering place!

Am I supposed to call Google myself and tell them the error of their ways? No, AAR should be doing that to correct its inept system, not me! That’s not my job! I waited two hours a few weeks ago because of this. What’s the point of giving the dispatchers the cross streets and landmarks, if they don’t follow through at their end, in giving the drivers the info? I’ll just keep on trying for them to correct this.

Joan Silaco Queens Village

Bolder climate action now

Dear Editor:

The climate crisis has been endangering the well-being of BIPOC and working New Yorkers disproportionately. The CLCPA, the Climate Leadership Community Protection Act, was passed in 2019 to reach net zero emissions in New York State. However, it is not fully funded. In my neighborhood of Corona, the Con Edison plant offers jobs to residents but also increases people’s chances of acquiring respiratory issues and prevents us from breathing clean air. The water we drink, the air we breathe and our vulnerability to climate catastrophes are a testament to how much urgency we should have to pass powerful environmental justice legislation. In order to achieve climate justice in New York State, we need to have renewable energy that is distributed equitably and make the biggest polluters and ultra-rich fund this transition. NY Renews’ Climate, Jobs, and Justice Package ensures this climate goal and allows people in my community to get an equitable transition to renewable energy and have access to good new green union jobs.

I want to see my community healthier and successful, but to do that, we have to call on our legislators to meet the ambitious mandate of New York’s landmark climate law.

Prisha Rao Corona

The writer is with the environmental organization Treeage, and a senior at Townsen d Harris High School.