That is a legitimate concern: drug users may end up selling drugs. Fortunately it's not topical to this debate. But drugs are a manufacted product which implies that it has an objective value in the first place. Is it ok for minors to sell drugs? Not in my opinion, but I don't see the consequences going away when we legalize the production and marketing of cannabis. Over half of meth houses are found with the help of concerned citizens, for example - I see the same thing could happen with finding unlicensed cannabis dealers. We have the ways and the means to regulate: as I pointed out to Elysia, the responsibilities of the DEA wouldn't go away when the law changes. Who the DEA arrests and under what circumstances would.I don't know, but I have to ask if you had the same concern for young people forced into dealing drugs as a way of living in the other thread?
If a liscense to sell were falsified, their legal age would betray them if they were a young person, and you would simply convict in any other case. ... If I were a judge.
In the context of that argument, I guess we could argue simplicities. I don't think concerned citizens deserve to be confounded by the legal activities going on around them. I'd draw a parallel to other types of abuse (specifically in the home) and how difficult it is to prosecute. Because you've got the registered prostitute, and then you have the person who was coerced into the sex trade who needs to report her personal incident. Provided that even happens, then you need to employ the police to investigate the incident and find sufficient evidence to prosecute. But once again the vurden falls on the proponent in the debate. What would constitute sufficient evidence to convince a jury?
This is why I said it undermines the statute we have for other sex crimes. I have little faith in a simple registry in this case. Let's assume a prostitute has her pimp arrested: On one hand, you could prove that she has done sexual activity through physical evidence, but legal documentation for her employment could be easily falsified. We'd be dependent on the technology and eye witness testimony to convict which to me is not enough. I'd much rather convict all the cases. Selling yourself may be construed as a service, but given the difficulty I see in legal conviction and how it further obfuscates real abuse cases as I see it, I can't support it.
Moral decay was sort of shrugged off in this debate too, but that's ok.
Elysia suggested that human trafficking is unrelated to prostitution. Well, it is, if you squint really hard. There is no legitimate counterclaim yet: human trafficking is how prostution rings seem to be running themselves around the world, irrespective of the willing participants. I just wanted to point that out to you Elysia. If human trafficking is something that we would like the law to handle, then we must outlaw its practices as I see it. I find other approaches impractical.