Dana Luch asked Nicholas D. Kristof:

Hi Nicholas, I work with women who identify as sex workers in Toronto and as I am sure you are aware there has been a lot of controversy and work being voiced about Bill C-36. What do you think about this proposition? Thanks, -Dana

Nicholas D. Kristof We have a chapter on sex work in A Path Appears. Look, there's no doubt that there are some adults who sell sex to other adults on a consensual basis. But on the whole the field is rife with trafficking and with juveniles, and efforts to legalize and regulate (as in Amsterdam and parts of Nevada and Sydney, Australia) have just created parallel black markets for underage girls. Seems to me the legalize-and-regulate model just hasn't worked very well, and that the best model is the Swedish one, which targets those who pay for sex without criminalizing those who sell it (instead seeing them as people in need of social services). We should generally be focusing on pimps and johns, not on sex workers themselves. In A Path Appears, we describe one girl trafficked into the sex trade as a young teenager who was arrested 147 times; her pimp, never.

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