The drugs – a further negative aspect of prostitution.
Sex slaves employ numerous adaptive mechanisms to survive their ordeals, including drug and alcohol abuse and the morose acceptance that the life of a sex slave is the best life they deserve.
A fact of this industry is also that most sex slaves are kept in an ongoing drug- and alcohol-induced daze.
The drug addition often begins when the victim is abducted or violated in the beginning of her life as a trafficked sex slave. It is often initiated towards her, when the victim are drugged and/or beaten into submission until her spirit is broken.
Breaking the spirits of slaves begins during transportation from her origins and continues once she is sold as a slave.
Women who engage in sex work have a wide range of lifestyles and work in vastly different settings, no matter whether they are forced into prostitution by traffickers or forced by other reasons e.g. cocaine addiction.
Whether drug use began as a way of coping with the act of prostitution (functional use) or whether prostitution is a mean of supporting a drug habit (casual use), an estimated 70% of women involved in street prostitution (USA) are already or will become drug addicted.
Drug addiction amongst prostitution is high. Crack-cocaine, in particular, is popular among street prostitutes. The live the absolutely hardest life as a prostitute.
Among indoor workers the use of “recreational drugs” such as cannabis, amphetamines and stimulants are common. Drugs as ecstasy, amphetamines and cannabis are often associated with “leisure time” and non work activities such as socializing with friends, dancing in late nightclub venues or relaxing with a romantic partner (leisure time activities are not an option for the trafficked victim).
Women who tended to use recreational drugs are in general under thirty-five years old. Many women within indoor prostitution (not trafficked prostitutes) are older than this. Often there are generational divisions between those think that drug use is acceptable or “normal” and those who think that drug use is deviant at any time or place. The trafficked victim has not got an option to choose.
And as the many sex buyers in the cities of Europe frequent nightclubs as a long night chill-out venues, where recreational substance is a regular part of the socializing ritual, the prostitute is often forced to arrange that the customer will buy a drink for him self and her at the bar in the nightclub.
Every night she is therefore more or less drunk. Thereby too, she will get an addiction to alcohol or cocaine, depending on the “party environment” in which she sells her services.
In general, the use of recreational drugs within the indoor sex establishments such as saunas, clubs, brothels and rented premises depend on the quality of the establishment, the image the owner want to portray, the type of clientele and the atmosphere of the working environment.
Prostitutes and freed victims of trafficking have reported that amphetamines are used at work as primers to gain confidence with the clients, handle the competitive atmosphere between the other prostitutes, as well as to stay awake on long night shifts.
Owners and managers of these establishments are less interested in how the prostitute felt or how she conducted herself as long as the business was running smoothly, avoiding police interventions and making profit.
The influence of crack-cocaine has dealt a devastating blow to women involved in prostitution. The lowest cost for drugs on the streets always equals the lowest cost for sex.
Today, the drug of choice is crack-cocaine and can be purchased everywhere. In order to compete in today's prostitution market; women have to work more, for less, and often under riskier circumstances.
Working more often can be interpreted to mean more client contact, which increases the risk of both customer-related violence and the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases besides a massive addiction on drugs and alcohol.
Drugs are found in brothels, clubs, massage parlours, apartments, hotels and in the streets among the street prostitutes. It is everywhere.
Crack cocaine has destabilized the structure of street prostitution in urban areas.
The entry of large numbers of crack-addicted women into street prostitution besides the increasing number of sex slaves in the sex industry has driven the price of sex down in the major cities in