Today "the common denominator of trafficking scenarios is the use of force, fraud, or coercion to exploit a person for profit. A victim can be subjected to labor exploitation, sexual exploitation, or both" (Greenhaven Press). Children as young as five are sold into sex tourism and many tourists believe they are helping the prostituted children they visit. One man that was traveling in Latin America told the United Nations International Children's Educational Fund (UNICEF) that he was helping the girls financially by paying them $20 for sex, which allows them to eat for at least a week. In many other countries though, human trafficking involves drugging children and adults, and forcing them into sexual encounters with strangers while their "owners", referred to as pimps, collect the money. The people being trafficked are so fearful of retaliation by their pimps that it can take many years before they can even describe what happened to them. By finding some sort of legal middle ground for prostitution, women will have more power over what happens to them and their bodies. Government regulation will reduce the sexual, physical, and illegal drug abuse from occurring, as well as reducing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases through regular exams and enforcement of safe sex policies.
More profitable than ever before, human trafficking has become a heinous practice; and it is important that people are aware that people are being trafficked and smuggled across borders for work, violence, commercial sex, and cheap labor. An annual profit of $8 billion to $10 billion has been estimated to have been collected through prostitution. Human trafficking has become the "perfect crime" (King 21). U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft pronounced in 2003, "Those who traffic in human lives treat people as easily expendable and highly profitable. But behind each dollar sign is a human tragedy" (King 22).
