> "Sex trafficking statistics are frustratingly incomplete, but a recent report estimated the number of victims in Europe at 270,000." > We accept this form of

> "Sex trafficking statistics are frustratingly incomplete, but a recent report estimated the number of victims in Europe at 270,000." > We accept this form of modern slavery? I don't, but prohibiting prostitution is a certain way to ensure that sex-trafficking will remain an issue, due to the huge demand for sex workers. Much like we can't stop the cartels in Mexico until we decouple them from their hundreds of billions a year in funding from US drug users, we can't attack the problem of human trafficking in earnest until we are willing to remove the demand in markets for illegally obtained people - which requires that we provide those markets some other way to find people. > "Denmark, which decriminalised prostitution in 1999 – the same year Sweden made the purchase of sex illegal - has four times the number of trafficking victims than its neighbour despite having around half the population." > There's a good argument against legalization. This doesn't address the topic under discussion, both because we're missing appropriate stats for those countries pre-change, but also because the change cited isn't the one we're talking about. Fundamentally, decriminalization is different than legalization, because it leaves control in the hands of black market actors while simply removing some of their penalties for operating (perhaps only at certain tiers). If you think that's a "good" argument against legalization, I'd say that we should legalize tomorrow.