Sex sells, and that’s a fact. From Rally’s commercials including half dressed women to X-rated movies, sex is put into American brains constantly, but yet, we still withhold rights and protection to the nation’s sex workers. Currently, the only place where prostitution is legal in the U.S. is Nevada. Personally, I think it’s time to legalize and  provide proper rights to American sex workers all over the nation.

With the idea of sex workers, the first thought is that they are usually women who don’t respect themselves, are involved with pimps and commit vulgar acts alongside abusing various drugs. That image isn’t completely false by any means, but legalizing and treating prostitution like an actual job will help eliminate that universal image. When the government steps in, it helps provide standardized work safety laws, such as drug testing, holidays, minimum wage and health procedures.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not promoting prostitution. I would never recommend it to anyone, nor do it myself. That doesn’t mean it should be illegal though. When life happens, people have to do what they have to do to survive. If prostitution is what some people have to do to provide for themselves and their families, then so be it. It’s their choice, and they should be able to be protected while doing so. If they were doing the same acts on camera to make a profit, then it would be treated so differently. I can’t personally comprehend the reasoning why that, as soon as a camera is involved, it’s automatically legal.

I also understand how hard it would be to regulate and legalize prostitution. All in all, the nation has to start somewhere. According to prostitution.procon.org, there are 49 countries, including Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Brazil, where prostitution is legal. Therefore, it’s clearly not impossible to do or maintain. It’ll be hard at first, the government and whoever is in charge will have to set up regulations, but those regulations will also help clean up the sex workers. Requiring drug tests especially, will help settle the problem.

“Athens has announced that its economy is 25% bigger than thought thanks, in part, to the round-the-clock duties of the country’s prostitutes…” as stated by prostitution.procon.org. This is a clear representation of how a country can benefit from the work of prostitutes; it’s a main reason of why we should legalize it.

According to economists.com and experienceproject.com, on average, a prostitute makes roughly $250 an hour, per customer. Obviously, there are no taxes when it comes to sex work, due to it being illegal, but what if there were? When the math is done, if each sex worker has roughly 9-10 customers a day, and ” that’s roughly $15,750 a week per person. After the math, that’s roughly $819,000 a year. That’s definitely a good amount of money, and if the government begins to acknowledge prostitution as a legal job, then they can begin to tax it as a work place, therefore the government, and the nation, can begin to profit from sex workers the same way Greece has been doing.

These requirements would obviously have to involve having a boss at the organized brothels. Making the idea of a “pimp” disappear, will lower the abuse rates within this work and ultimately expel them. Appointing mature people to run the brothels and actually care for the workers in a professional way will be a major step towards helping our nation’s sex workers.

With work rights comes health care, therefore the workers can also see doctors for any problems revolved around their work. This alone will help making it a cleaner business by being able to get attention for STDs. If the workers are able to see a doctor, rather than just hoping for the best, it could actually slow down the rate of STD spreading.

So, if sex workers are willingly giving themselves to earn money, they are of legal age and are in a healthy state, then what should be stopping them? People casually hook-up often, why should involving money make it illegal? The government should start helping regulate prostitution, but also making it legal. Legalizing this profession will not only benefit the sex workers of our nation but will also be a profit to our government.