Safe sex workspace
It’s time for a safer sex work site in Vancouver
Recently the Supreme Court of Canada made a unanimous decision to uphold Vancouver’s supervised injection site’s exemption to federal drug laws because it’s a health service and reduces the spread of HIV and hepatitis C. This enabled Insite to remain open.
This was a victory for the community, and it’s a perfect time to enact an exemption from the laws surrounding sex work to open a safer sex work site. Suspending the current laws around sex work could allow a safe sex workspace, akin to a safe injection site, to open its doors to the community. Both initiatives are harm reduction focused; they provide an indoor supervised environment, prevent deaths, and enhance the health and safety of the clients.
Research from the Maka Project, a community-based project conducted by WISH Drop-In Centre Society and the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, points to the issues surrounding sex workers and drug use, noting the potential severity to both workers and the community:
“Sharing illicit drugs with clients/johns may be a crucial risk marker for heightened vulnerability to violence and sexual and drug-related harms among survival sex workers. In this study, over half of survival sex workers reported drug sharing with clients and sharing drugs was associated with several factors previously linked to increased likelihood of infectious disease transmission, including multiple unprotected sexual encounters and intensive crack cocaine smoking.”
Indoor sex work is better at accommodating sex worker health and safety initiatives; by contrast, outdoor work environments provide far more challenges. Condom use at the safe sex work site would be mandatory, and street nurses would offer regular HIV and sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment.
Other countries already have legal brothels with harm reduction programs and policies.
According to a Wall Street Journal article on sex work in Belgium, “The taxes [on the brothel] help pay for a 12-person prostitution police squad.... Officers patrol the zone day and night. Under Belgian law, prostitutes must be EU citizens and at least 18 years old. If the squad finds a non-EU citizen, trafficked woman, or underage prostitute working in a brothel, the brothel can be put out of business. The city recently built a new health center in the red-light district, and provides prostitutes with free and anonymous medical advice, AIDS screenings, and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.”
The New Zealand government, which decriminalized sex work in 2003, created harm reduction policies to complement the law. One policy was devised to bring outdoor sex workers indoors. According to the executive summary, “The Committee recognizes the danger street work poses to sex workers, and…considers street-based sex workers should be encouraged to either move to a safer, indoor setting, or leave sex work altogether.”
The Maka Project reported, “Analysis of the narratives and daily lived experiences of women sex workers highlight the urgent need for a renewed HIV prevention strategy that moves beyond a solely individual-level focus to structural and environmental interventions, including legal reforms, that facilitate ‘enabling environments’ for HIV prevention.”
The way forward first requires that the federal government provide an exemption to our current prostitution laws in recognition of the grave harm they’re causing workers and the community and fuelling the spread of HIV. With this exemption in place, a safe sex work site can provide a much safer work environment for sex workers.